


“Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle”

by Polgarawolf



Series: Star Wars: You Became to Me [50]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anger, Apparent suicide, Belonging, Betrayal, Civil War, Communication Failure, Consent Issues, Dreams, Dubious Consent, Duty, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Jedi emotions and relationships, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Exhaustion, Expanded Universe Character Death(s), Expanded Universe Characters, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Fanaticism, Fear, Freedom, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Hatred, Honor, Hypocrisy, Illnesses, Injury, Jedi (sacrificial ethics), Jedi Code, Lies, Loss, Love, Loyalty, M/M, Mad Scientists, Manipulations, Memory Loss, Mental Abuse, Mental Anguish, Mental Disintegration, Mental/spiritual/emotional betrayal/rape, Mentors, Murder, Near Death Experience, Near-human hermaphrodites, Near-human physiology, Nightmares, Nobility, Not-quite-death, Obsession, Obsessive Behaviour, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Patricide, Patricide (of sorts), Politics, Possessive Behavior, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Prison, Protectiveness, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Revenge, Rough Sex, Royalty, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Shame, Sith, Sith machinations, Slavery, Suicide by battle, Teen Pregnancy, Torture, Trapped, Trauma, Trust, Unplanned Pregnancy, Violence, Visions, War, broken trust, dark side, trickery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-15
Updated: 2008-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polgarawolf/pseuds/Polgarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is one hundred and thirty random but chronological moments from the life of former Jedi Padawan and supposed Dark Jedi Xanatos of Telos IV. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle”

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings: 1.)** This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Xanatos’ life, as he has been written (or at least referred to) and is going to be written in my not even nearly complete AU **Star Wars** series **_You Became to Me_**. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask! There are some things I can’t elaborate on much more, for fear of at least partially spoiling some stories still in the works, but I realize that such a radical retelling of some parts of EU history could be somewhat confusing, so I invite questions from readers who’re puzzled and/or curious! **2.)** Xanatos has a child by Latura Damoriana Endmon (aka Tura Omega – mother of Granta Omega – known aliases Turla Anoukt and Tula Alvathanos, original birth name Suqella Taldolna Rishma), but she’s merely the means to an end, for him. Unknown even to the Jedi, he fathers another son by Lilura Yzabelia Tietphaea, a former princess of Emet (a neighboring system to Telos), but the relationship ends with the woman’s death and, in any case, she’s also never more than the means to an end, for him. Xanatos is in love with a man he never meets, while his (original) physical body lives, and, as he is never truly allowed to know the boy who should have been his Padawan, while his flesh yet lives, he is . . . somewhat confused as to the kind of bond he shares with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Thus, aside from the faithful devotion he bears for his family and his constantly thwarted need to be with Obi-Wan, his desires have little to do with any kind of love.
> 
>  **Author’s Notes: 1.)** Again, this is compatible with my SW AU series **_You Became to Me_** , including my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, if you squint at a couple of things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Xani’s eyes. **2.)** Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set I borrowed from somewhere on the LJ (I don’t recall from where anymore, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not really meant to be a response to the challenge associated with that set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Xanatos. **3.)** Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters like Xanatos and his parents (just because only his father, Crion, is ever mentioned anywhere in the EU, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also have a mother, folks!) and the mother of his firstborn son (or that son, Granta Omega), or for original characters, for that matter, should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ! For clarity's sake, though, please know that I picture Xanatos as a tall Cillian Murphy, Ila Shoserkan as a black-haired and, at least at first, very young Tyson Ritter, the vegetative boy whose body Xanatos comes to reside in, Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis (at least initially), as a young Tom Sturridge, Latura Damoriana Endmon (aka Tura Omega, Granta Omega's mother) as a young Mariska Hargitay, Granta Omega as Jonathan Rhys Meyers (with very black hair), and Jenna Zan Arbor as Sharon Stone. Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish (within reason, given their genetic backgrounds)! 
> 
> **Clarification Note:** One of the reasons why my AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_ is so entirely not even nearly complete has to do with the fact that I really started writing at the wrong end of the prequel trilogy for an AU series (though, in my defense, when I first started what became my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, which is now over a million words long, I thought I was doing a sort of one-shot fix-it based on an idea I got for "fixing" RotS by changing something that happens very near the end of James Luceno's EU novel _Labyrinth of Evil_ , which is set immediately prior to RotS). One of these days, I fully intend to rectify that problem by going back and starting from the beginning, with an AU rewrite of TPM, which is why I took the time to do a character study sketch for a supporting character like Xanatos. In addition to playing a fairly prominent role in sequels planned for my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, he'll very likely be showing up again, in a more prominent role, whenever I get around to that AU rewrite of TPM and any stories that end up being set in between it and my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio. Folks might want to keep that in mind when reading this, since technically this is spoilerish for some AU novels/stories that I haven't gotten around to writing yet!

**"Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle"**

 

　

　

 **01.) Project:** When the Mandalorian Wars led to such conflict within the Jedi Order that another galactic war (the Jedi Civil War, also known as the Second Sith War) began on the heels of the first, Telos IV (often simply referred to as Telos, as it is the only Class M planet in its system as well as the only world in that system considered habitable for most human and humanoid species without resorting to terraforming or entirely enclosed domes) was ravaged by forces of the Sith Empire, due to the simple fact that the Jedi had long ago chosen the world to be one of many to play host to the Agricultural Corps (a branch of the Jedi Service Corps, where some of the Jedi initiates who failed to successfully proceed in their training were sent to work as farmers and laborers) and that they had chosen the world to also act as the site of a secret Jedi academy and repository of artifacts and records; though the infamous Jedi Exile’s efforts to finally end the First Jedi Purge and to break the power of the Sith Triumvirate forever were successful, allowing for the successful completion of the Telosian Restoration Project (as ordered by the Republican Supreme Chancellor Cressa and overseen jointly by the Telosian Council and the Ithorian herd of Chodo Habat) and the rejuvenation of the world into a lushly fecund and breathtakingly lovely planet, the Telosian population has never quite forgotten that the original near destruction of their world came about because of the Jedi’s presence on their planet, and so it has become common for the people of Telos IV to treat Jedi with wariness and contempt rather than trust and respect.

 **02.) Royal:** Unlike their neighbors in the nearest inhabited system – Emet, with its three separate Class M planets, including the binary worlds of Alawwal and Alakhir and the solitary world of Ninhursag (considered sacred by the Emetarians and so largely untouched, but for vast cultivated gardens and magnificent monuments dedicated to the concept of the universal light and ever spreading spark of life that the Emetarians regard as that which binds the whole of the universe together and allows it to grow and prosper, a power of creation and goodness and love that they generally hold as being somewhat synonymous with the Jedi concept of the Force), all largely inhabited by humans who have so adapted over time to the peculiar quirks of their worlds that they fall into that shadowy area between decisively human norm and obviously near-human – Telosians recognize no monarch, no royal house, no specifically endowed class of nobility with the right to pass along their titles through blood and blood alone: there are the founding houses and their supporters and relations, who, through right of merit, fill the seats of the Telosian Council if and only if they can prove and continue to prove their worth and right to the privileges and responsibilities associated with such positions by winning their appointments, in free, democratic elections; there are the public servants who, either by impressing the public with their education and energy and effectiveness and true interest or by failing to do so, may be elected or cast down from power over the public realm through the power of free, democratic elections; and there is the public, both rich and poor alike, the vote of each man, woman, and sentient being accounted at or past the age of full reason given the right to cast a ballot in each and every election, with each and every vote all being counted in the same manner, with no weight given or taken away from any, no one being or house or district allowed more power than another in any given vote or referendum: if it should so happen that the founding families and their merit adoptees most often swell the ranks of the Telosian Council and fill the majority of the positions of government and all other such branches of public service, and if it so happens that there are certain old and affluent and, dare one even say, nobly endowed families who tend to produce more than not of the planet-wide Governors of Telos, well, then that is only because the system of merit and democracy work, and the people of Telos trust in it and in each other and their own personal honor to always make sure that things are done because they are just and right, not because they favor a certain affluent or influential few.

 **03.) Honor:** Honor to and even beyond death; integrity; dignity; honesty; fairness; faithfulness; respect; loyalty; fidelity; courage; perseverance; wisdom; benevolence; magnanimity; rectitude; discipline; industriousness; self-reliance; virtuous conduct; moral and ethical righteousness; nobility of heart, of mind, of soul, of spirit; frugality balanced ever with generosity, hospitality, and scorn of meanness; serenity balanced ever with passion; strength of character and open thoughtfulness of the mind balanced with strength of the heart and vigorous skill of the flesh; mercy balanced ever with duty to one’s kin, to one’s fellow beings, and to those unable to protect themselves most especially; faithful respect towards, support of, love for, and adherence to the upholding of family; care for those unable to properly care for themselves; unwavering upholder and defender of truth; unfailing champion of freedom and democracy: these concepts and more are all a part of the traditional Telosian code of honor, all notions in which Telosian culture and customs and beliefs are rooted and in which, therefore, the sentient beings of Telos IV are all deeply steeped, from birth until death and even beyond, accounting both for the general peace and prosperity and cultural achievements of the world, and the seemingly stubborn independence and self-reliance of the planet’s people, who willingly look only to themselves and to each other for aid and guidance and rarely welcome the interference of any outsiders in Telosian events.

 **04.) Prince:** Though Telos IV has no royalty or even nobility, _per se_ , between his father’s highly illustrious ancestry and his mother’s hugely esteemed familial line – the Aiji clan not only being that of one of the founding families but also one that has quite literally produced hundreds of Governors (Telos IV’s planetary leaders, the lawfully invested chancellors of the combined executive and judicial body of the Telosian Council, legally electable for no more than twelve years consecutively, with mandatory reelections held every four years, or for twenty years altogether, so long as the final eight years were served commencing a minimum of eight years following the end of each Governor’s previous term) and Viziers (the highest ranking of all political advisers to the Governor and legally endowed chief ministers of the legislative branch of the Telosian Parliament, lawfully electable for no more than eight years consecutively, with mandatory reelections held every four years, or for twenty-four years altogether, so long as each group of eight years were served commencing a minimum of eight more years following the end of each Vizier’s previous term) since the Galactic Republic’s original colonization of Telos IV, a little over five thousand years previous to the outbreak of the Mandalorian Wars, and the Adi-Ai family representing not only a specific blending of two other lines counted amongst those of the founding families but quite literally the most wealthy of all the clans of Telos IV – it would not precisely be an exaggeration to name Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji a prince of Telos IV.

 **05.) Different:** Xanatos has always known that he’s different from everyone around him – after all, he knew things without being told; could make objects move just by thinking hard about them moving; dreamed of things days, weeks, occasionally even months before they would occur (and, later in life, would sometimes dream of some things years prior to their occurrence); could effect the way beings and animals around him felt and behaved, simply by wanting very much for those changes to be so; and so on – but his mother had only girls before him and miscarried of another girl less than a year after giving birth to him, so there was never any talk of sending him to the Jedi for training, given how unswervingly concerned his father always was about the necessity of having a male heir able to carry on the family line and so allow for the much celebrated alliance of the Adi-Ai and the Aiji houses to continue to be embodied in a viable and thriving new clan, beyond the generation of the alliance itself.

 **06.) Interfere:** From the time when he is very little, Xanatos dreams about the young boy (who seems to age naturally, even as he ages) with the flashing dark eyes and hair like the blackness of space and caramel colored skin, and, though the dreams are all so very _real_ that he occasionally has difficulty remembering that the events in them haven’t truly transpired in his actual life (especially when he is still very young), he never actually meets the boy; yet, it isn’t until much later, when he begins to mature and to understand how often politics and ignorance and sheer disadvantage of distance in combination with too few overall Jedi can interfere with those who’re brought to the Jedi Temple for training, that he begins to formulate the theory that occasionally the Force’s will can be thwarted inadvertently by adverse circumstances or outright (even maliciously) ignored by individuals, to far-reaching and, oftentimes, hugely ill effect.

 **07.) Trust:** He dreams of Qui-Gon Jinn for more than a month, solid, prior to the man’s arrival on Telos IV; yet, he also dreams of another, slightly older man with Qui-Gon, and so he isn’t sure, at first (until after he’s asked and been told about the apprentice’s Master, a Serennoian by the name of Yannis Dooku), that he should trust in either his dreams or the Jedi who’s appeared on his world seemingly from out of those dreams, and that’s why the Jedi Padawan’s mission is almost over by the time Xanatos decides to ask to be taken to Coruscant with him when Qui-Gon returns to the Order’s Temple there.

 **08.) Condition:** Xanatos is technically too old to be taken in by the Order – nearly four years of age, which exceeds the cut off date for human norms and many variants of near-human by most of a year, given that most such confirmed Force-sensitives aren’t accepted as initiates past the age of three, unless the Grand Master and/or the High Council specifically decides to make an exception to the rule – and his father isn’t all that thrilled with the idea of him becoming a Jedi anyway, even though his mother gave birth to a healthy baby boy a few weeks prior to Qui-Gon’s arrival on Telos IV and Ycillam certainly seems eminently capable of acting as the heir apparent to the family; yet, he’s also clearly quite talented and wants to be a Jedi and, once arrived on Coruscant, Master Dooku and his Padawan are both absolutely adamant about the fact that he should be trained, so, after several days of debate, the High Council agrees to admit him for training, though the Grand Master insists that his acceptance is granted only on the condition that he be at the same overall level of education and preparatory instruction as his agemates in the crèche by the end of the year, firmly stipulating that he will be sent back home to Telos IV if this condition is not satisfactorily met.

 **09.) Lead:** Everything comes to Xanatos so easily that there’s never any question, really, of him being sent home in disgrace: he doesn’t just lead the way for his age group in the crèche, when it comes to both his grades in practical courses as well as in more theoretical/abstract classes and his talent and mastery of both more physical disciplines and more esoteric subjects: he knows more and can generally outdo and outperform younglings five and six years his elders or more, depending on the rate of maturity of their individual species, as long as feats of raw physical strength aren’t brought into the mix (and, even then, usually he can still outmaneuver them).

 **10.) Excess:** Xanatos is handsome to the point of prettiness, even as a very young child – he’s inherited the blue eyes and the regal uprightness of both his parents, the silken raven black hair of his mother, and the naturally slender but muscular physique of his father; plus, he also has long, thick fringes of lashes around those eerily bright blue eyes and a mouth with lushly full lips most women would kill to have – and, thankfully, it helps cut down on many potential problems in the crèche, as he’s also extremely charismatic and capable of being quite charming, to boot, when he wants to be, meaning that literally hundreds of individuals who otherwise might’ve been envious of him and disliked him enough to attempt to bully him or perhaps even hated him sufficiently to purposefully seek to do him major physical harm were instead so enthralled with him that they spent most of their time vying for his attention and friendship (or more), instead of plotting evil things to do to him because of the fact that he excelled at everything so effortlessly that basically all of his instructors loved him in excess of just about all of their other students.

 **11.) Progress:** Qui-Gon and Master Dooku both check up on him frequently, in the years he spends training in the crèche, and they’re both so impressed with his rapid progress not only in what the Jedi refer to as Core and Universal powers as well as talents relating to various aspects of Control but also some complex and powerful Force Sense and Force Alter skills that they both often either give him access to and else send him outright supplementary materials and advanced training modules, both to help keep him properly challenged and occupied and to try to test the limits of his abilities and intelligence, and he delights in making sure that they are both kept properly amazed and pleased with his rapid pace of advancement.

 **12.) Speechless:** Xanatos has always thought that Master Dooku would be the one to become his Master – he likes Qui-Gon Jinn well enough and all and he’s grateful for what the Hydarian-descended Thoradian did to get him to the Temple and accepted for training, but Dooku is the one he’s always seen with him, in his dreams of the future, and Dooku is the one who resonates to him most strongly and most _rightly_ , in the Force, soothing him and making him feel as if all of the rough edges of himself have been smoothed over and filled in and somehow made to become whole – and so he’s stunned to find out that the person Master Yoda has been cryptically talking to him about having come before the High Council to speak for him, out of a desire to become his Master, is _Qui-Gon_ and not Dooku . . . shocked too speechless even to think of protesting before the grumpy little ancient Master can turn aside with a harrumph and stump away.

 **13.) Contention:** Xanatos would prefer not to make Knight Jinn mad at him – the man is both physically large and powerful as well as hugely strong in the Living Force and he owes him a debt of honor for bringing him to the Jedi Temple, plus, there’s also the possibility that it could be very unpleasant indeed to be stuck with the man for the next decade or so if he were to take it into his head that Xanatos has been deliberately disrespectful to him – but he truly did think that he was agreeing to become _Dooku’s_ Padawan learner and it’s _Dooku_ he wants as a Master and, in any case, since he doesn’t want to be a bone of contention between the former Master and Padawan pair, he figures the safest thing to do is to ask the man if he can’t just let Xanatos go to Dooku after all, even though Qui-Gon has apparently already badgered the Grand Master into (begrudgingly) giving him permission to become Xanatos’ Master, to see if he can’t fix the problem before it becomes irreversible; Qui-Gon, though, just stubbornly sets his jaw, insists that the Force means Xanatos for him and that Dooku will just have to learn to accept that, and refuses to talk about it anymore, his countenance and his signature in the Force so thunderous that, for once in his life, Xanatos is truly afraid to try to push a point any further with someone.

 **14.) Vindictive:** He gets the feeling that the Grand Master doesn’t care for him all that much and honestly can’t even begin to imagine why Yoda would dislike him so – after all, he accelerated so quickly through his general studies as a youngling that the little being hardly ever even had him as a student, having passing him on through those courses so quickly, and he’s never had any complaints brought against him by either his fellow students or his instructors, either – yet he’s nonetheless fairly certain that it’s vindictive glee buried beneath Yoda’s general grumpiness when he rather nastily insists that Xanatos should’ve been more careful to make sure that Yoda was actually talking about Master Dooku before he was so swift to accept the offer of being made a Padawan and that, the bond having been announced publicly and presumably already been cemented by the formation of a proper training bond to tie him to Qui-Gon, it’s far too late to do anything about the decision . . . unless, of course, Xanatos would prefer to leave the Order entirely, because of the problem.

 **15.) Challenge:** Even though he’s bitterly disappointed in both the Grand Master and his High Council and Qui-Gon Jinn (and he feels rather as if he’s had some of his innocence and ability to trust in others violently and irreparably torn), when it becomes clear that Master Dooku still cares too much for his former apprentice and the peace of the Order to potentially shatter both by formally crying challenge against the decision to apprentice Xanatos to Qui-Gon, according to the most ancient customs of the Order, he decides that he has no other choice than to make the absolute best of the situation (however frustrating and unfair), no matter what it might cost him, and that he absolutely _cannot_ let Yoda have the satisfaction of knowing he’s won.

 **16.) Study:** They most certainly aren’t supposed to – Qui-Gon would have a fit of truly epic proportions, he’s sure, if he were to ever find out, and would likely force the High Council to intervene, to put a stop to it – but Xanatos and Master Dooku have always occasionally secretly conversed via encrypted comm units, and, after he’s taken as Knight Jinn’s Padawan, they simply continue to do so, the Serennoian Jedi Master not only keeping in fairly close contact with him but also continuing to send him copies of advanced materials to study generally not available for personal perusal until either one has become a senior Padawan approaching the time of Trials or else after one has been made a Knight (and sometimes not even until one has gained the title of Master or petitioned for and been given special permission by the High Council), in this way helping both to stem his frustration with the nature of his apprenticeship and to keep him occupied and to make sure that he continues to be able to learn and advance at an accelerated rate, Master Dooku even taking care to be sure that certain kinds of talents and techniques and knowledge that might otherwise have been neglected in his studies (especially considering Qui-Gon’s tendency to focus excessively on his own areas of strength, most of them rooted in the Living Force) are covered by the extra materials and study plans he passes along.

 **17.) Fanatic:** When one really gets down to it, the simple fact of the matter is that Qui-Gon Jinn is something of a terrifying mass of contradictions – on the one hand, he’s a not all that closeted hedonist, reveling in good food and fine vintages and lovely things (be they inanimate or not, sentient or not), unabashedly using just about every spare hour on mission to slake the apparently quite formidable and wide-ranging desires of his flesh in others (irregardless of such things as gender, species, age, station in life, or apparently anything at all but availability and at least minimal interest. He doesn’t think his prodigiously voracious Master has actually outright _forced_ anyone or taken undue advantage of anyone, in order to have his way; he is fairly certain that there’s been at least a little bit of compulsion and/or mind-trickery going on, along the lines of mesmeric glamour to decrease inhibitions and increase libido, though, whether Qui-Gon himself is wielding the ability entirely consciously all the time or not. He seriously wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that his Master’s seed, so diligently spread from one side of the galaxy to another and from one end of the galaxy to the next and back again and again and again, had taken root and produced literally hundreds of illegitimate offspring . . . nor would he be at all surprised to find out that most of the mothers in question hadn’t had any intention to have those children, prior to finding themselves carrying his Master’s babies, at which point they likely would’ve found themselves entirely incapable of doing anything but continue to carry them to term, whether they truly wanted to or not. Master Jinn’s connection with the Living Force is such and his belief in the necessity to ensure the proliferation of Force-sensitives in the galaxy is such that he would doubtlessly be able to all but effortlessly power right past any and every precaution his partners might attempt to take against conceiving, and it would not shock Xanatos at all to learn that his Master were leaving all of the myriad partners he had who were capable of carrying deliberately impressed with an unbreakable command to have and to properly care for any offspring that might result from their couplings, irregardless of whether it might be desirable, plausible, or even safe for the partners in question to do so), his attention to his own pleasures so consistent and so selfish and so absolute that it almost comes off as a kind of religious devotion; yet, on the other hand, Qui-Gon is also a consummate Jedi Knight and diplomat, his devotion to peace and the protection of life so total, so unqualified and pure, his conviction in the utter necessity to follow and fulfill the will of the Force so unshakeable and unswerving, his belief in the Order and the Republic and his right to do whatever’s necessary to protect both so steadfast, that he comes off half the time essentially as a fanatic (a _vheato_ , they would call him, on Telos, a man so full of his belief and his sense of righteousness that he would willingly sacrifice anyone and anything on the altar of his faith, without hesitation or question. A religious zealot, not in the sense of bowing down to idols or sacrificing virgins on a sacred altar, but in the sense of being infused by religious mania, given his absolute conviction that, since the Force willed the Jedi to act in certain ways, it also specifically willed him to do certain things – to follow some given paths but not others and to be a willing instrument in the accomplishment of certain destinies, as supposedly chosen by the Force; to be a perfect vessel for the Force, apparently hearing only its voice and obeying only its will, and, under its alleged guidance, becoming utterly incapable of feeling or seeing or thinking anything else – and that, as a Jedi, he simply did not have the ability to disobey it) and the other half of the time as if his beliefs are so deeply entrenched that his mind has fossilized to the point where he simply cannot adapt at all (a very strange sort of condition for a being so strong in the Living Force, to be sure!) and has no desire whatsoever to try to learn how to do so, either – and while Xanatos truly does believe that he is, at heart, a fairly good individual (or at least someone who tries very hard – most of the time, anyway – to be good, to be the very picture of a perfect, gentle, faithful Jedi Knight of the Republic), he can’t help but be at least occasionally frightened by the darker side of Qui-Gon’s unshakeable convictions and unbending beliefs, his sheer self-righteous surety of himself and his actions.

 **18.) Resemblance:** He’s had to deal with emotional overflow from the man’s lustful encounters ever since the training bond between them solidified into a proper Master-Padawan bond and he’s certainly received several glimpses of his Master both near the beginning of and just after (and even a few brief – but never brief enough! – mental images from the midst of) his many encounters; he’s about a month and a half shy of fourteen, though, the first time he accidentally walks in on Qui-Gon in the midst of his pleasures – usually, the bond would be so flooded with Qui-Gon’s satisfaction and ecstasy that he’d know better and stay away, but he’s still recovering from a botched attempted poisoning involving a strong Force-inhibiting drug and he’s having trouble hearing himself, in the Force, much less sensing Qui-Gon and his emotions – and he’s so shocked and mortified that he just stands there, gaping, while Qui-Gon presses the kneeling boy down against the mattress with obviously painfully hard force, large hands digging in with bruising strength against his partner’s pale thighs as he urgently shoves the boy’s thin legs further apart to make more room for himself, hips pistoning into him with an ugly sounding meaty slap, one huge hand sliding up to tangle brutally in overlong black locks and the other clamped so firmly around the boy’s left hip, to keep him from arching downwards or bowing away from him as he plunges once more within, that his fingers seem to be threatening to either break the skin or crack the fragile upper curve of the boy’s pelvis, Qui-Gon’s final thrust so rough that he draws blood, the boy beneath him rudely shoved off of hands and knees by the crushing force of that undulation, the cry he makes too muffled by the bedclothes his face has been unceremoniously thrust down into to tell if it’s a noise of protesting pain or surprised pleasure, Qui-Gon’s whole body convulsing powerfully with pleasure (arced back over the supplicated boy, the sheer muscled bulk of the enormous Jedi Knight at once caging, dominating, and dwarfing the pale slimness of the man-child under him) even as he looks up with wide eyes towards the open door, voice strangled not with shame but with the unrestrained force of his climax as he cries, "Xani!" in a mixture of surprise and something else (something he won’t be able to name properly for many years), as he unabashedly rides out the last of his writhing pleasure, allowing the boy’s fair flesh to milk every last drop of ecstasy from him possible, so that it takes several moments for him to react to Xanatos’ presence, beyond looking up at him, the noise the boy makes when Qui-Gon finishes and pulls abruptly out of him (flesh pulling free with a prolonged, sickening, squelching sound, shining wetly with what looks like a mixture of spit and semen and something slick and faintly tinged with blue, fresh blood streaking the enormous length and girth of him, still mostly erect – or else already hard again – as he slides incrementally into view, the boy’s flesh apparently not lubricated enough to keep from clinging to him as he unceremoniously pulls out), though also muffled, seeming much closer to pain than pleasure, to Xanatos’ ears, and so he just continues to stand there, just inside the doorway, too shocked and horrified to do anything else, mind a humming panicked blank, as Qui-Gon purposefully continues to move, uncoiling himself from around the boy and sliding back off of the bed, shining, blood-streaked erection bobbing with the motion and seeming to grow harder, longer, wider, and more darkly (seemingly angrily) flushed with every passing heartbeat, the flared head brushing against the flat hardness of Qui-Gon’s own belly as he bends down to grab the collapsed and unmoving boy by the nearest shoulder (Qui-Gon’s hand closing with excessive force around that fragile, bird-like joint) and yank him back off of the bed after him, the brusque motions making it seem like he’s thinking of just picking the boy up and bodily throwing him out of the room; when Xanatos sees the boy, though – raven-locked, brightly blue-eyed, slim, milky pale, and easily young enough to be of questionable legality (and most likely to be illegal, to someone Qui-Gon’s age), wide mouth with almost ridiculously lush lips looking badly bruised from use and erection flushed so darkly purple-red it looks painful, Qui-Gon having evidently been far too preoccupied with his own pleasure to spare even a moment for his partner’s – he panics and flees, leaving the bedchamber at a dead run, too spooked by what must be just an accidental resemblance (and surely that’s all it is. Qui-Gon may be promiscuous, but for stars’ sakes, that doesn’t mean he’s also a pervert! The boy likely doesn’t even look all that much like him, and he’s just overreacting out of shock) to tolerate another moment in that room.

 **19.) Care:** They don’t talk about it, afterwards – Qui-Gon doesn’t change his licentious ways, but for almost half a year he does take a lot of care (for him, at least!) to be sure Xanatos that isn’t around when he takes his pleasure and he keeps his private bedchamber locked if he thinks he might be disturbed in the midst of something at all intimate – but he feels very strange about being near Qui-Gon when they’re alone, for a time, and has very strange, frightening dreams – all the more disturbing because he cannot clearly recall them, upon waking, and, in fact, can remember nothing about them, but for a sense of confused motion and pain mixed with anger and shame and violence – off and on for a couple of months, especially after the man-child from the awful encounter (a local on Hainthen, a world they’re frequenting for a diplomatic function, overseeing some delicate planetary elections), Ila Shoserkan, approaches him to enviously declare him the luckiest bastard in all the worlds . . . and to warn him that if he doesn’t keep Qui-Gon happy that he’ll surely lose him to someone else, someone more capable of pleasing him.

 **20.) Duty:** He was chosen as a Padawan fairly young (barely twelve), so for the first couple of years he’s safe from being meddled with or pressured overly much, on account of his youth, but by the time he’s approaching fifteen and still shows no sign of taking advantage of certain available pleasures, Qui-Gon beings to look at him askance, and, even though he has no interest in sleeping his way across the galaxy, as a slightly belated gift for the fifteenth anniversary of his day of birth, Qui-Gon arranges for certain learning experiences (apparently under the impression that he’s not nailing everything that moves because he’s unlearned in the ways of lovemaking and shy, or some such nonsense), taking him to Serenno for three weeks of instruction by several bound concubines of House Dooku (apparently made available by the largesse of Master Dooku) and lecturing him solemnly before handing him over to their tender mercies about both the duty of the Jedi to avoid attachments and other unsuitable entanglements by living in the now and taking advantage of pleasure when and where and however it may be offered to them and the responsibility of the Jedi to not let Force-sensitivity dwindle or (Force forfend!) die out and telling him that he must add a regular release of the flesh to his physical regime in order to maintain optimum health of his body and gain a focus of mind that will not be easily distracted.

 **21.) Flesh:** He has nothing against pleasure and he’s most certainly not a prude; if all he’d wanted was an indolent life of ease, though, he would’ve stayed on Telos IV as a wealthy, spoiled heir of the richest and most politically influential clan by marriage alliance in Telosian history, besides which is the fact that, if he can’t keep the so-called needs of his flesh from ruling him, then he honestly doesn’t believe he has any real business trying to even be a Jedi, in the first place: it both perplexes him and irks him to think that Qui-Gon simply cannot (or _will_ not) understand that and leave things be, instead of all but forcing him to go against both his will and his nature and his belief in the importance of family, as something to be protected and nurtured and honored, not entered into lightly, on a whim, just to scratch some bodily itch, and then just as quickly abandoned (though it’s different, a little, with other males, who cannot get pregnant and, if interested in him, usually – not always but generally, quite often – have no expectations of getting or of remaining close enough for the issue of family to become pertinent) afterwards!

 **22.) Love:** He’s fifteen, when the dreams start – he’s himself, only older, and there’s someone with him, someone young and slender and agile and dazzlingly beautiful and perfect and _right_ (his presence resonating with Xanatos with such strength, such exquisiteness, that the sensation of it stops the breath in his chest and makes his heart literally ache with wanting), with mesmeric eyes like shifting oceans and hair like the bright corona of a rising sun, the two of them laughing as they dance, lightsabers effortlessly flashing through arcs of motion so swift that nothing of the weapons is visible but the eldritch pale blue smears of bright light left briefly behind by their humming passage through the air, and it’s gorgeous, it’s art, it’s sheer joy, it’s an act of ringing affirmation, of unbridled adoration, a singing, shouting, rejoicing declaration of love, and Force, _Force_ , this is the most perfect, the most glorious, the most pleasurable and pleasing and purely _good_ thing he’s ever been so blessed as to experience, and he revels in it, luxuriates in it, wants it to never end, wants to stay forever locked in this dance with this beauteous boy not only for the rest of his life but for all the lives that will follow, returning to the final embrace of the Force to become truly one with its essence only when there are no new joys, no new knowledge, no new treasures, nothing new under all the suns of creation to be gained by returning together to lives of either the flesh or the fired spirit, would give anything, _everything_ , to have that, to have this, to have _him_ (light made flesh, beauty incarnate, the Force itself made tangible, power and love and life all mixed together in intoxicating measures, bright blazing soul of unrestrained energy held back only a very little by its vessel of body), have _them_ , and become reality for all eternity– and wakes only with the greatest of reluctance, tears of loss streaking his face, weighed down with so much pain and sorrow that even the great Qui-Gon Jinn, the eternally oblivious, notices and asks after his well-being, though the only comfort he can offer is the infuriating old Jedi platitude about all dreams passing, eventually, with time, the clumsy attempt at consolation doing nothing but making him fear that the dreams may, indeed, eventually pass . . . without ever coming true.

 **23.) Fire:** When his mother, Shoshani, helped him convince his father to permit Qui-Gon to take him to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for training, one of the conditions Crion set (granted by the High Council as a favor to his father, to make up for the insults Qui-Gon had, in the firmness of his conviction that Xanatos was meant for the Order, inadvertently offered up against his family) was that he would be permitted to communicate with Xanatos regularly (at least once a month, but no more than thirteen times a year, barring any disasters) about both his progress in the Order and the happiness and well-being and prosperity of both the family and of the Telosians in general; thus, it doesn’t take long for the information to reach him, when mother, brother, and four youngest sisters are killed in what is clearly an attempt to wipe out the whole of his family, on Telos IV – the explosion and fire clearly rigged to take out the whole household, the fire burning so fast that nothing and no one at all can be saved from the main estate as well as so hot that the remains of the youngest of his sisters cannot even be located, afterwards – all but three of his sisters (all older sisters, already married to a shipping magnate from Corellia, a relatively minor but very wealthy and surprisingly progressive noble from Eriadu, and a somewhat minor but also quite wealthy and so influential member of an essentially noble Kiffar clan, and so apparently far enough away from the family to safely be out of the picture) and his father claimed, with Crion escaping sharing the family’s fate on Telos IV only because he was suddenly and unexpectedly called away on a business matter, and the ache of loss and anger (and absolute abject frustration over the fact that the killers seem to have gotten away with their arson and assassinations) Xanatos feels is so painful and so constant, so distracting, that the only solution he can find is to throw himself violently into his studies and the missions he and Qui-Gon are assigned, consistently working to and past the point of exhaustion simply so that he can sleep at night, his proficiency at many complex and esoteric Force powers progressing so rapidly that, even though he is barely sixteen, whispers begin to circulate around the Temple that he is swiftly approaching the time when he will be ready for his Trials of Knighthood.

 **24.) Shock:** Over the years, most of the contact he’s had with his family has been through his mother, Ycillam, and his sisters (he’d come to know his younger brother and his little sisters mainly through comm calls and letters, Ycillam having only been recently borne and his four youngest sisters having not even been borne yet when he left for Coruscant), so it’s such a shock (and in more ways than one) to suddenly begin receiving missives from his father, speaking in carefully couched terms (all by referencing specific Telosian novels, plays, poems, works of art, etc.) of duty and familial obligation and honor above all things, that he makes the mistake of responding defensively and giving Crion the upper hand before he can quite recall himself to his senses or remember how very like Qui-Gon his father can be, when it comes to getting his own way, if the welfare of his family or what he considers to be the greatest possible eventual good for Telos and Telosians is involved, irregardless of the wishes of others or how many beings considered unimportant to him and/or unworthy of being protected might be hurt in the process of getting whatever it is that he wants.

 **25.) Plan:** His father wants an heir and Qui-Gon wants him to sow the galaxy with his seed and, with the two practically united in purpose and breathing down his neck, Xanatos eventually finds himself unequal to the task of continuing to refuse them both; thus, he decides to do the practical thing and assuage his growing guilt at constantly disappointing the wishes of both by essentially downing two avians with one missile, and, towards that end, on the next mission he and Qui-Gon are assigned that’s likely to take at least a couple of months to see through to a proper end (on an impoverished moon – surprisingly backwater and undeveloped, for being in the Core, in the Eeropa Sector – in orbit around the much lusher, much more densely settled, far more civilized, in terms of readily available technology and luxury items and culture, and far, far more wealthy Nierport), he carefully searches out a young woman of limited resources but ambition to advance in life and a will to have children of her own but a mind capable of being bent (though only if it should become absolutely necessary, of course!) and no real talent to speak of, in the Force (to limit the possibility that the Order might ruin his plans by deciding to take the child away to train as a Jedi), and then quite deliberately seduces and impregnates her, the plan being to send her and the child to Telos IV and his father when the boy is old enough to be accounted healthy and viable as an heir for Crion, and so not only get his father to stop badgering him about his responsibility to his planet and his people and his family but also be able to truthfully tell Qui-Gon that he has been doing his part to ensure that his genes are passed along and that the Force shouldn’t suffer from any lack of procreation on his part.

 **26.)** **Heir:** Personally, he finds it all more than a little ridiculous, all this worrying about proper blood heirs and sons capable of carrying on the family name and ensuring the continuance of the clan line (as if women weren’t even truly full members of their families, just because a majority of traditions in the known galaxy ensure that most human and near-human females will most generally take on the surnames of their husbands and/or handfasted mates and so in essence become wedded to the families of those lawful spouses, rather than the opposite occurring); unfortunately, though, his father certainly regards the issue with (painfully) deadly seriousness, and apparently so do a lot of other (supposedly rational) sentient beings, so he does his best to do the more politic thing and keep his opinions to himself and just make the arrangements to give Crion the heir he wants and leave it at that.

 **27.) Vessel:** He is very careful to choose someone unimportant, someone without any family or mentors or friends who might be angered by his liaison with her, and, perhaps, he does slightly too good of a job: the girl (Latura Damoriana Endmon, as she informs him) is no one, really, and nothing at all special – he feels badly for thinking of her in such a demeaning, belittling fashion, but honestly, she’s no more than a tool to be used, a vessel to be filled, her needs and desires so very basic (so primitive and unimaginative) that he honestly finds it difficult to think of her as a fully sentient being instead of a pet requiring a certain amount of attention and guidance to keep alive and healthy and out of trouble – just a sweet and pliant self-proclaimed romantic who’s so sufficiently eager to have him without even knowing who or what he truly is that he finds it simplicity in itself to carry out at least the first part of his schemes to satisfy both his Master and his father, getting her with child (being very careful to ensure it will be a son, such things being possible with enough fine control of one’s body) and then arranging for her to have sufficient money and proper care until the baby comes to make sure that the child will be borne safely and have a fairly comfortable home to grow in, setting up a way to ensure that they can communicate safely (as necessary) and not even bothering to tell her more than his first name until after he’s certain that she’s given him a strong and healthy son who should, with any luck, live many years and father enough children of his own to assure the continued survival of their family line.

 **28.) Name:** As Xanatos will eventually discover, though the boy Latura ends up bearing him will look remarkably like him – hair so black that it’s iridescent; enormous bright blue eyes; plushly full lips; ghostly pale skin; very fine, well defined features; beautifully articulate bone structure; etc. – his signature in the Force will be muted, odd, almost muddy (in an oddly muddled fashion), his latent sensitivity to the Force so weak that the Jedi Order should never have any reason to even so much as look at him as a potential candidate for training; thus, he will tell the girl to legally name the child Ousire Cashile Yzrael Adi-Ai-Aiji and finalize his plans to break the news properly to Crion, in such a way that the man will be fully satisfied and not feel any reason to ask for anything else like this from him ever again.

 **29.) Ill:** In the immediate aftermath of his return to the Temple from the mission to Nierport VII, though, he makes the mistake of accompanying his Master on a visit to his good friend, Knight Tahl, where he immediately catches the rather nasty variant of combined stomach and head flu that’s been circulating around the Temple for much of the past month, to which he reacts so badly that he ends up confined to isolation quarters in the Healers’ Ward while Qui-Gon is shipped off on a solo mission to infiltrate and break open a highly illegal slave trading ring operating from the Colonies out to the Outer Rim Territories . . . which is the only reason why he’s not with Qui-Gon when the man discovers and frees Obi-Wan Kenobi, though he can most certainly feel the man’s towering rage and fierce protectiveness loud and clear along their bond long before Qui-Gon bothers to report in and let anyone know that he’s bringing an enormously strong but badly abused and extremely ill Force-sensitive little boy back to the Temple with him.

 **30.) Home:** Obi-Wan has to be brought directly to the Healers’ Ward for treatment upon arriving at the Temple, his condition is so bad, and Xanatos is still waiting for the results on his last battery of tests and the issuance of a clean bill of health to release him back to his own room, in the suite he shares with Master Jinn, so he’s just down the hall when there is what literally feels like a massive explosion in the Force, rocking the immediate physical area so hard that he’s unceremoniously thrown out of his bed and onto the floor before he can even start to move to react, to catch himself, a sudden sharp flood of fear from his Master along the bond making him automatically pick himself up off of the floor and run, flat out, for the sense Qui-Gon’s particular presence, in the Force, body in combat mode right up until the moment when he skids into the treatment room to find a double handful of Healers and assistants in training to become Healers themselves all laid out in various contorted positions around the room (many close to the walls, as if the shockwave of an actual explosion had thrown them violently backwards until they met with the physical barrier of the limits of the room), a frantic if stunned looking Qui-Gon being helped to his feet by a not too terribly steady looking Tahl while Dooku hovers uncertainly over the clearly unconscious form of the Grand Master and the far, far too thin and battered looking form of a young boy-child hovers mid air above the remains of a not just shattered but clearly pulverized bacta tank (despite the fact that they weigh something like five hundred kilos and are designed to be virtually unbreakable, most of the material of such tanks made of the same grade of transparisteel used for military starship viewports, meaning that it would take power on the same kind of scale as would be required to vaporize a capital ship to even dent or scratch such a tank, much less manage to break it up into the tiny glittering fragments that are strewn all across the floor of the room in and around the spray pattern of violently spilled bacta, shining like tiny chunks of jagged ice from a sudden hailstorm), the whole of his tiny form visibly crackling with excess Force energy, the sight of that goo-covered and clearly terrified child striking such a chord of instantaneous _knowing_ and automatic loving protectiveness within him that he instantly turns and snarls, voice crackling with undeniable Force-command, "All of you, stay back!" before dashing across the room to the child with fearlessly outstretched arms, a wordless, mingled cry of fearful warning from Qui-Gon and Dooku coming far too late to stop him from reaching out to the boy . . . who, with a sob, drops like a stone into his welcoming embrace, the ominous glow around him extinguishing as if a switch somewhere had been thrown, the child’s far too skinny arms wrapping around his neck and his tiny little thin legs circling as far as they can around his torso, the child clinging to him with desperate strength and crying with relief, as if he’s finally come home after far too long a time away and plans never to willingly leave again.

 **31.) Confusion:** As it comes out, the badly injured and even more malnourished youngling was unconscious by the time he was brought in to the Healers’ Ward and placed pretty much directly into a bacta tank, still unconscious, only regaining consciousness when Master Yoda came to see him and, being the irritatingly curious being that he is, rapped smartly on the tank with his gimer stick in order to try to get the young boy’s attention – a gesture obviously taken as a threat by the disoriented child, given the subsequent blast of energy that shattered the tank, threw the Grand Master violently enough into the ceiling to crack the painted plaster and drive him down into unconsciousness, and lit the boy up like a miniature sun, throwing back Healers and assistants and even sending Qui-Gon tumbling head over heels when he foolishly tried to approach the child from the back, without warning – at which point chaos and confusion reigned until Xanatos’ sudden arrival unexpectedly quieted the traumatized boy and made him quiescently docile, to the point where he even allowed Xanatos to (eventually, when they could both stand to be parted) hand him over to one of the Master Healers (who’d rushed in only a few instants after Xanatos himself) to be put carefully into a new, whole tank of fresh bacta (cut with a little bota, this time), to encourage a speedy healing and the fullest possible of recoveries.

 **32.) Prisoner:** Obi-Wan had been held in a slavers’ den in a filthy cage within a cage within a cage, the innermost cage more properly sized for holding a couple of pet pittins than a human child (however small or young), for approximately half a standard year (so far as Qui-Gon was able to determine, before being forced to act to defend himself – though frankly Xanatos wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that, in his rage over the boy’s mistreatment, Qui-Gon deliberately invited the attack, to gain an excuse to retaliate that couldn’t be chalked up to an act of infuriated vengeance by the High Council – and consequently wiping out the entire operation) by slave traders terrified of the "demons" that supposedly possessed the boy, trying to torture the unnaturalness out of him and constantly being thwarted from their fearful desire to simply murder him outright by the child’s sheer strength in the Force, his sensitivity to the flows of the Force so unprecedentedly strong, so phenomenally vast, that none of the regular methods used by slavers to combat Force-sensitivity ever really entirely worked on him, though they grimly, determinedly, and with an increasing amount of sadistic savagery kept trying to find _something_ (drugs, pain, thirst and starvation, a combination of all three) that could completely break his connection to the Force (and his spirit), resolute in their desire to make good on the contracted purchase of the small boy as just one of many potential slaves supplied from one of their usual procurers – a pirate gang that apparently seized the child, along with several others sentient beings, on a semi successful raid against a transport ship out of Kimanan, in the Inner Rim, no other members of his family having been stolen and so nothing known of him other than his name (provided by another prisoner, who died of her wounds on the trip to Tatooine), the idiots who stole him not even realizing how immensely strong he was in the Force and that it would be next to impossible to control him (much less make a profit off of him by selling him) until after it was already far too late for them to do anything sensible, like leave him behind on the damaged ship with the rest of the passengers and crew who doubtlessly survived the raid – even if they had to all but kill him first in order to do so.

 **33.) Explain:** They honestly can’t explain why Obi-Wan reacts to Xanatos the way that he does – like Xanatos is someone the boy has known and trusted and loved for all of his admittedly not yet very long life – or why Xanatos’ instinct is to protect and cherish and defend Obi-Wan above all others, even to the point of doing himself harm by making others far more powerful than he within the Order angry and suspicious over the way he keeps chasing people away from the boy; Xanatos, though, really needs no one to try to explain it to him: Obi-Wan fits to him as if he were the last missing piece of his own soul, and that is all the reason Xanatos needs to love the child and protect and cherish and defend him, unswervingly and unconditionally, even if it means making both Qui-Gon and Master Dooku as well as the Grand Master of the Jedi Order and much of the High Council and the workers within the Healers’ Ward all look at him askance, perplexed and envious and more than a little bit angry over and fearful of his closeness with the youngling, who is already so strong in the Force that he can blow past Yoda’s defenses as if they were naught but tattered cobwebs and send the little Master flying (flipping him entirely before throwing him violently down), the extent of Obi-Wan’s power so enormous that more than a few Knights and Masters already are regarding him with awe and more than a little trepidation.

 **34.) Recovery:** As long as Xanatos is there with him, the boy is quiet and peaceful, untroubled by bad memories or evil dreams, his recovery so swift and steady (all things considered, the child having been frightfully close to death, despite all of Qui-Gon’s efforts, by the time the Knight got him to the Healers’ Ward) as to be practically miraculous; yet, if Xanatos leaves him for too long, even if Qui-Gon is still with him, he will gradually revert to that terrified eye of a storm of epic proportions in the Force, and, though Qui-Gon (if he is sufficiently cautious and patient, which, surprisingly enough, he generally is with the boy, more often than not) is usually able to calm the worst of the boy’s terrors (especially if Obi-Wan has been sleeping and the nightmares have been particularly intense, leaving him in such dire need of comfort that apparently even Qui-Gon will do, so long as he is moderately careful), between Xanatos’ determination to stay with and protect the child and the boy’s undeniable improvement around him, despite the dark frowns of the Grand Master and more than a few of the Healers, what happens is that Xanatos essentially ends up moving in with Obi-Wan while he’s being kept in the Healers’ Ward.

 **35.) Declare:** Generally, he detests the overly familiar (and faintly ill-omened, by Telosian tradition) shortening of his first name that Qui-Gon and others often use to refer to him by, but the first time he hears Obi-Wan’s musical voice joyously declare, "Xani!" as he walks in to the little one’s recovery room in the Healers’ Ward, he instantly falls in love with the designation.

 **36.) Choice:** Even if it is just a run out to the Orus Sector, to see if they can try to track down the ship that the youngling might’ve been on when he was abducted by the pirates who would turn him over to those slavers on Tatooine, he really doesn’t want to go on a mission while Obi-Wan is still having such bad nightmares and is so new to the dormer rooms of the crèche – there’s another child of approximately the same age there who seems fascinated with Obi-Wan and inclined to try to stay close to him and take care of him, but Garen Muln is little and he is _not_ Xanatos, blast it all! – but Yoda apparently is convinced that, since Qui-Gon found the boy, he’s the one who should try to track down where he came from (and from whom, if possible), and, though Qui-Gon seems uneasy about leaving the boy behind so early on in his acclimation to the Temple, too, unfortunately they don’t’ seem to have a choice in the matter.

 **37.) Waiting:** Obi-Wan is waiting for them when their ship lands – Force alone only knows how he managed to get out of the crèche or to find his way safely here, to this specific docking bay and the area set aside for this specific starship – but the little boy gleefully shouts out, "Xani! Qui!" and hurtles himself at Xanatos with all the subtlety of a playfully pouncing feline, throwing himself fearlessly off of the nearby walkway and trusting Xanatos to catch him before he can either fall or collide painfully with either Qui-Gon or Xanatos or both . . . which Xanatos does, gladly, jumping up to snatch him midair, Obi-Wan giggling madly as Xanatos spins, whirling them both around, too relieved to see him and to know that he’s alright to be worried or angry yet about the fact that evidently the workers in the crèche haven’t been watching him all that well, given that he’s so obviously escaped them.

 **38.) Guard:** He and Qui-Gon become something like semi-permanent fixtures in the crèche, because of Obi-Wan, and he finds, much to his surprise, that he doesn’t mind being around the little ones nearly so much as he’d always thought that he would (not being all that big a fan of endless and repetitive questions, snotty noses, crying or temper tantrums, or shrieking and loud laughter), actually even coming to enjoy himself and to genuinely like the little band of friends who’ve assembled themselves around Obi-Wan like an honor guard, heartily approving of the unwavering devotion and friendship of the three younglings who become and remain closest to him and shamelessly encouraging their collective protectiveness towards Obi-Wan.

 **39.) Special:** His initial assumption (when he actually bothers to stop and think about it) is that he is simply destined to eventually become Obi-Wan’s Master; however, the longer he knows the child and the stronger the undeniable bond between them grows and the more aware he becomes of certain irrefutable (however seemingly impossible) truths about Obi-Wan and the range and extent of his natural power and control and abilities, the more he begins to wonder if there might not be more to it than that . . . and the stronger his suspicion becomes that Obi-Wan is no mere ordinary Jedi initiate and may, in fact, be someone extremely special indeed, someone spoken of often (if frustratingly cryptically) in ancient prophecies known not just to the Jedi but to others, as well, someone fated to change not just the whole of the Republic or the galaxy, even, but the universe ( _all_ of the universes) and the very Force as well, and that he may, therefore, need to make arrangements to take certain steps, if he’s going to see to it that Obi-Wan is permitted to fulfill his destiny, unhindered in his work by the small, anxious hearts and petty minds of the Jedi who should, by all rights, be doing everything in their power to protect and to serve him, but instead seem well on their way to holding him back, out of their envy and suspicion and fear.

 **40.) Help:** Obi-Wan is the only person at the Temple he trusts enough to tell about his family – about what happened to his mother and brother and sisters and why he is obligated by Telosian law and custom and his own sense of honor to obey any request that Crion might make of him, if the identities of the arsonist assassins are ever discovered and his father is able to legally file for and make an acceptable case for his right to claim vendetta in the courts of the Guild, and why he humored his father’s desire for a male heir by arranging to have a son of his own, who can be sent to Telos IV and trained to become the next head of the Adi-Ai-Aiji family when he has reached the proper age – and, though the boy is so young that he shouldn’t, by all rights, truly comprehend what it is that he’s telling him, from the way that Obi-Wan listens to him and the questions he asks and the _sense_ of him that Xanatos feels, in the Force, he knows that Obi-Wan understands him perfectly and not only acknowledges the honor-based workings of the Telosian system and the reasons why that arrangement works, for the people of Telos IV, but agrees that Xanatos has done the right thing, so far, by arranging to have a son Crion will be able to raise as his new heir, and truly wants to help him, if that petition for vendetta should ever be approved.

 **41.) Slow:** Since, unlike the Telosians, who operate politically largely according to merit and ability (certain family lines often having members in power due to the simple fact that they train the most diligently to be able to serve the people of Telos), the Emetarians have a combination of supposedly divinely appointed and affirmed royalty and an hereditary priesthood of sorts that doubles as a noble class, and so cannot simply vote troublemakers and would-be tyrants and incompetents out of office, the Emetarians unfortunately have to deal with problems associated with possible charges of blasphemy, rebellion, and even heresy, if they wish to get someone removed from power – even if that someone is corrupt and has no business whatsoever being in such a position of power; even if that someone used deceit, treachery, and vile murder to gain such power in the first place – thus, changes to their government are generally quite slow (and, more often than not, involve a lot of internal, behind the scenes maneuvering on the parts of persons able to . . . deal with, neutralize, or otherwise remove potential problems) . . . except for when they move with unnatural speed.

 **42.) Treachery:** The formal alliance treaty between the sentient beings of the Telos system and of the Emet system has stood since roughly a thousand years prior to the Mandalorian Wars, and, in that whole time, the surname of the formally titled Great Sacred High Royal House of Emet has changed only _once_ , the death of a male heir without issue requiring the passing of the throne to a married sister, with her name being altered according to Emetarian traditions to reflect her change in status (her original royal surname, Nymfertyet, and her married surname, Caerucifera, combining and changing to Tietphaea, to indicate both her status as Queen and the reasons behind her rise to the throne), and so perhaps Crion should have been expecting trouble – and, too, perhaps Xanatos should have realized that the changes in the Emet system had something to do with the deaths of so many of his family members by violence – when, all of a sudden, the throne passed to a family by the name of Labara, even though the two systems had been allies and trading partners for so long that the very notion of treachery seemed an impossibility.

 **43.) Vulnerable:** He is not told until he has passed his twentieth birthday – Crion, evidently, knows him well enough to have realized that, between his Telosian code of honor and the Jedi Code instilled in him by the Order, he would not have been able to stand by and do nothing to avenge the many wrongs done by the Labara family, both to his family and the people of Telos IV and the many Emetarians killed or made to suffer because of their despicable usurpation of the throne – but apparently his mother and brother and, as it turns out, three of his four youngest sisters were all killed as part of a campaign designed to rid Telos of its leaders and greatest public servants and those members of their families most likely to be capable of picking up where their relatives would’ve left off, in the event of their deaths, so as to make Telos weak and vulnerable, chaotic and ungoverned, so that the power-hungry Labara family could add the Telos system to their ill-gotten domain, and, when he has gathered sufficient evidence of this terrible, treacherous scheme (and learned that the youngest of his girls had been seized and was being kept prisoner by the new heir apparent to the throne of Emet, apparently due to his consuming obsession with her), the challenge that his father subsequently issues against the renewal of the Telosian-Emetarian Alliance Treaty is the first step in an effort to allow Crion to properly bring charges of vendetta (formally and legally) against the Labara clan.

 **44.) Petition:** There are perfectly legal ways for dealing with insufferable insults to family and to honor and to the state, on Telos IV, with the petition of vendetta before the Guild of Lawful Codes and Conduct (or just the Guild, as it is more often called) being the final, most terrible of these entirely lawful resorts, invoking as such a petition does ancient rites of honor challenges, recompense, duels, and, if necessary, outright assassinations for those too cowardly to partake of the rites of challenge and duel and too far in the wrong to ever make true recompense through any other means; however, these lawful and honorable resorts for the wronged do not, precisely, extend past the borders of the sovereign state of Telos IV itself, which makes prosecuting the Labara family and those others of the Emetarian domain responsible for the murders of five members of the Adi-Ai-Aiji famly and roughly seven hundred and ten known other Telosian citizens somewhat problematic . . . which is precisely why the Governor, Vizier, and closest legal counsel of both from among the Telosian Council and Parliament (lawyers, licensed Guild members, and politicians, all) eventually all agree that bringing Emet into the fold of Telos, at least for a time, will provide the most legally solid means by which to bring charges against those murderers, so that it will be lawfully permissible to prosecute them to the fullest possible extent and they will have no choice but to submit themselves to the offices of the Guild.

 **45.) Nasty:** Unfortunately, when Crion and therefore Telos challenges the rightness of renewing the Telosian-Emetarian Alliance Treaty, the Senate takes note, since Telos IV is a popular vacation spot for many of its members and the aides who work on several senatorial staffs, and that means that the Jedi Order also notices and worries; thus, even though he and Qui-Gon are supposed to be in the midst of a month’s worth of mandatory downtime at the Temple, following a rather nasty mission to infiltrate and bring down a criminal organization combining drug running and the taking of illegal slaves, since it is Telos IV and he is Crion’s son and since Yoda has never liked him all that much, it looks like he and Qui-Gon are the ones who’re going to end up being sent out there, to oversee and, if necessary, aid with the negotiations surrounding the reevaluation of the challenged treaty of alliance.

 **46.) Bad:** He wakes in the middle of the night knowing that there is someone else in his room, and is a heartbeat away from grabbing the hilt of his lightsaber out from under his pillow and flipping himself up out of the bed when a wavering, tear-choked voice whispers, "Xani? Don’t go. Don’t go, tomorrow. It’s bad. It’s a trap. _Bad_ things will happen. You won’t come back and _bad_ things – _really bad things_ – will happen, here, too. Please. _Please._ Don’t go. Don’t let them send you. Promise me. _Promise._ You can’t – you _can’t_ – Xani, _please_ – " prompting him to throw the covers back and open his arms and allow the clearly terrified Obi-Wan to rush into his arms and the warmth of his bed, shoulders shaking violently with sobs that, no matter how many soothing noises he makes or how often he draws his left hand through Obi-Wan’s silken hair while rubbing his back with the other or how often he murmuringly promises that he will try to find out if another team cannot go and that he will be as careful as can possibly be, if the Grand Master refuses to relent, never do more than to taper off into hiccoughing little hitching sighs before the boy exhausts himself and falls to sleep with his head pillowed on Xanatos’ chest.

 **47.) Hurt:** To say that Qui-Gon startles Obi-Wan when he unexpectedly comes into the room, the next morning, to see if Xanatos is awake yet, would be like saying that the surface of a blue class star is a just little bit warm: Xanatos is still only just starting to surface from sleep when Qui-Gon walks in and makes his way over to the bed (accustomed as he is to having his Master come in to wake him, if the times when they need to be up and about have changed at all or if there is any doubt that he might wake up in time to get to where they’re supposed to be next on time) and isn’t expecting any trouble, so he cannot even begin to react quickly enough to stop Obi-Wan from starting violently and shoving himself up on the bed, snatching the lightsaber hilt out from beneath Xanatos’ pillow, and launching himself at Qui-Gon with a surprisingly resonant yet shrill ululating noise sounding rather like a Hapan battle cry (which – though it unfortunately only occurs to him much, much later, when he can’t do anything to test his theory – if truly the sound that he were aiming for, would help to explain rather a lot about Obi-Wan, in his opinion), the thrumming sound of the lightsaber actually being switched on and the subsequent automatic triggering of Xanatos’ instinctive effort to reclaim his weapon, through the Force, the sole reasons why Qui-Gon isn’t sliced cleanly through with the blade and killed . . . a fact for which he will later have much cause to feel regret, though, at the time, he’s far too busy trying to catch hold of and comfort Obi-Wan, who’s half shouting with rage and half keening hysterically about a bad man who’s going to hurt Xanatos, for it to really even sink in how close the boy came to truly ending Qui-Gon’s life.

 **48.) Ugly:** He absolutely plants himself, both feet put firmly down – just utterly refuses to go anywhere until Obi-Wan has calmed down and he’s able to piece together what it is that’s truly wrong, that has him so upset, and why – and, though Qui-Gon (for once!) initially backs him completely, when Yoda gets that gimlet look in those narrowly slitted oversized odd citrine-olivine draconian eyes, gleaming disturbingly (sickly) yellow under heavy lids, sets his jaw and tilts his head in such a way that, for a few bizarre and truly disconcerting moments, the better part of his face is cast in deep shadows by some trick of a combination of the quality and angle of light, features mottled black and blue, seemingly rotten with darkness, and snarls in the most guttural, ugly manner, "Disappointment like I not, apprentice. Go, you will, to Telos IV, with your apprentice. This problem, resolve for me, _you will_. Both of you. _Now_ , my apprentices," Qui-Gon abruptly changes his tune and, left hand clamped down on his right shoulder so tight that Xanatos will have bruises for upwards of a month, afterwards, and a gag of hardened air rudely rammed by the Force in between his teeth to keep him silent, essentially drags him to the ship bound for Telos IV, so that they can make it before it leaves without them.

 **49.) Paranoid:** Qui-Gon is a self-righteous hasty idiot: hearing the Governor of Telos IV has cried an unprecedented challenge on the Telosian-Emetarian Alliance Treaty, he automatically assumes the worst of Crion (evidently based solely on the fact that Qui-Gon thinks Crion is likely an evil man simply because he tends to distrust Jedi and has never liked Qui-Gon), without ever even bothering to check into the Emetarian government or wondering if the rulers of that domain might’ve done something to warrant the reaction of attempting to cut political ties, in preparation for action against Emet; seeing that there has been a massive buildup in Telosian military forces, as if in preparation of a devastating war, he again assumes the worst (that Governor Crion means to essentially wipe out the Emetarians, in order to get at the natural resources and wealth of their three worlds), it apparently never occurring to him that such a buildup in force might be meant to serve as a goad sufficiently threatening to make the Labara family surrender without a long struggle with many casualties; knowing of and able to think of no just reason for such an attack, he again assumes the worst, not even bothering to check the legal records or to ask anyone why a conflict might be at hand against Emet before leaping to his own, utterly insane conclusion; noticing that Crion is holding private council with Xanatos and that Xanatos is behaving more and more as a Telosian and as Crion’s second in command, he assumes the worst of both father and son, in his paranoia dreaming that Crion is seducing Xanatos back to his side, away from the Jedi Order (and Qui-Gon) with promises of power and ill-gotten wealth, never bothering to ask Xanatos what is going on or to query Crion as to why the involvement of his eldest and only remaining son might legally be called for, in his planned action against Emet, his own lingering guilt and disquiet over having essentially stolen Xanatos from Dooku manifesting as a fear that Xanatos will similarly be stolen away from him; perhaps worst of all, seeing nothing but his own shame-fueled, guilt-driven, paranoid fears apparently coming true around him, as Crion and Xanatos and the leaders of Telos seemingly prepare to launch an invasion of Emet, he acts out of self-righteous and jealous rage, disappointment, and fear, publicly declaring (falsely so!) that Crion has deceived the people of Telos and plans to illegally and without cause invade and seize the system of Emet, solely for the added wealth and power that holding that domain could personally grant him, using the powerful persuasive strength of his Force-enhanced voice to make the people believe him and his words, irregardless of what they actually know or whether what he’s claiming makes any sense at all, sparking riots and rebellion among the Telosian public and forcing Xanatos and Crion to try to scramble the military to reestablish order and see if anything can be salvaged of the plans against Emet; then, seeing that Crion is still in power and that Xanatos is standing with him, Qui-Gon bulls ahead with his self-righteous, paranoid assumptions and physically attacks the Governor, not even bothering with issuing a challenge to tell him to stand down and surrender, just going after him, lightsaber drawn and ignited, cutting Crion down before Xanatos can do more than try to get in between them and then, for good measure, thoroughly beating Xanatos, too, with a combination of lightsaber and fists and feet and the Force, punching and kicking as well as searing into the flesh of his arms and legs in over a dozen places before he finally damages the hilt of Xanatos’ lightsaber (drawn and ignited in desperation, in an attempt to protect himself from his Master’s insanely furious pummeling), to disarm him, and then, after spitting on him contemptuously and declaring that, as a traitor to the Order forsworn of his vows, Xanatos is no longer his Padawan learner and will never be welcome at the Temple again, leaving him in a crumpled heap on the floor next to his father’s corpse, right cheek pressed painfully against the still branding-hot remains of Crion’s broken signet ring, severed when Qui-Gon cut through the Governor’s raised hands (thrown up in a vain attempt to tell Qui-Gon to stop and to provide himself with some distance/protection from the enraged man) in order to get at him to deliver a killing blow.

 **50.) Blood:** Being scored and scorched with a lightsaber’s frozen laser is perhaps the most excruciating physical pain a person can suffer and still only be said to have suffered a fairly minor wound, in terms of actual threat to one’s life (the searing heat cauterizing as it goes, acting as a concentrated burn rather than a cut or other kind of simple puncture wound); yet, that mind-numbing haze of blood-washed agony is nothing in comparison to the desolation of knowing that his father has been wrongfully murdered by his clearly forsworn Master and that he is now, by Telosian law, bound to claim reparation and vengeance for that act, that he must, as his father’s heir, legally pursue the lawfully approved and declared vendetta against Emet and the Labara family, and that roughly half of his own people are apparently so weak-minded and weak-willed that they’ve turned on his father and him, bringing civil war to Telos IV and permitting the murderous and therefore fallen and Dark Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn to brutally attack and slay his father, meaning that he will have to exact vengeance against them, eventually, as well, if he wishes to remain at all true to his Telosian and Jedi upbringing and responsibilities and duties, as Crion’s son and as one who must now consider himself the only true Jedi Bendu to have been wrongfully cast out of the corrupt and clearly in need of scourging Jedi Order.

 **51.) Rape:** He already has something very like the kind of bond that a Master will have with an apprentice with Obi-Wan, and so he feels it, in excruciatingly agonizing detail, when Qui-Gon rips into the child with the Force, attempting to perform the equivalent of gouging his ability to sense, call on, and use the Force out as if it were something physically present within his mind and body to be dug out and ripped up by the roots, his attack more brutal and violating than the most violent rape of the body, all but destroying the boy (mentally, emotionally, and, if not in the particulars of his strength, then certainly in his ability to access and control many of the diverse facets of his Force-sensitive talent) in the process, the pain so bad that it’s weeks before Xanatos is able to function at anything like normal levels again, and his fury is such that he vows to take or destroy everything and everyone Qui-Gon calls or has thought of as dear, holds or has kept in any kind of regard, all prior to killing him, so that the Dark Jedi Knight will know what it means to truly suffer, before he is finally permitted to expire.

 **52.) Suicidal:** It is when he is grimly attempting to execute what he can of his responsibilities, while still trying to arrive at the means for fulfilling the remainder of his duties, that Xanatos finally understands that _he_ was the problem (he and, quite possibly, Obi-Wan, given that there is no evidence that Qui-Gon has been implemented, much less blamed or properly punished, for his violent attack on the child, even though the Grand Master surely must know what it is that happened, given that it occurred in the Temple, essentially right beneath his nose) Yoda ordered them to Telos IV to "resolve," and he desperately wants to storm the Temple, then, and call on the Force to bring Yoda to justice, drag him and his erstwhile former Master down to the Senate, where he can present evidence against Qui-Gon and Yoda that will not just result in them both not only being thrown from the Order but forcibly rehabilitated, too, as Revan once was and other Dark Jedi have been, in the past, to strip them of their ability and will to do more harm, so that they can be properly punished, with no fear of them escaping or inflicting harm on either other innocents around them or those attempting to bring them to sacred justice, so he will no longer have no need of stealing Obi-Wan away, as the removal of the Grand Master’s indubitably Dark and corrupting influence should permit the Order to function as it ought to, according to the will of the Force; unfortunately, though he knows better than to try it: despite the fact that the Republic and the Order have not interfered with either the restoration of order on Telos or the seizing of Emet, for purposes of legally enforcing the terms of vendetta, Qui-Gon’s version of events has been widely published and accepted and all attempts to make the truth known beyond the borders of Telos and Emet have utterly failed, messages being destroyed and witnesses sent out to give testimony vanishing never to be heard of again, meaning that the High Council (doubtlessly due to Yoda’s manipulations, perhaps even solely at Yoda’s behest, with the other Council members knowing nothing of his illegal, immoral, and destructive actions) and the Senate have apparently struck a deal and that both will take whatever steps may be necessary both to conceal the truth about what happened on Telos IV and why and to keep it from coming to light that a Knight of the Jedi Order did anything so criminally wrong in the first place and that they’ve conspired to cover it up, meaning that the self-righteous ass will likely believe himself to be the only one wronged or hurt by recent events . . . and that it will be that much more devastating if he waits to spring the truth on Jinn himself, at some later date, instead of throwing his life away on a suicidal mission to the Temple with no hope of success.

 **53.) Repay:** The Labara are cowardly dogs and Emet falls easily when the so-called King attempts to buy his way out of Xanatos’ and the Telosians’ bad graces by giving them the sacred planet as a bribe and the Telosians record that offer for broadcasting all across the Emet system, causing the people to rise up in a wholly (holy) indignant fury against their clearly blasphemous and evil rulers and surrender to Xanatos so that he can fully prosecute the guilty for their crimes, as he has explained (in a postscript tacked on to the end of the transmitted recording of the King’s desperate offer) he will do, with or without the help and permission of the people of Emet, though he would greatly appreciate not being called upon to perhaps hurt the innocent in the pursuit of his sacred duty, as the son of Crion and a child of Telos: they make a clean sweep of the government for the Emetarians, Xanatos using his gift to weed out the truly guilty from those ignorant of what transpired or forced into maintaining silence for reasons good enough to exonerate them for their cooperation, and, when he finds his littlest sister, Jalmariyana, being held in what amounts to a gilded cage of a prison, evidently having been held captive by the heir apparent of the Labara clan, who’d become obsessed with her and been convinced that he had to have her – even to the point of forcing her to become his legally bound concubine, once she had reached what’s considered the age of majority by the Emetarians – Xanatos instantly knows how best to repay the Emetarians for their criminal lack of concern about the fitness of their rulers, especially once he realizes that his sister is with child and that, legally speaking, since she was forced into the arrangement with Crown Prince Ulixeos Yanisin Labara, by Emetarian law, she cannot be touched for the man’s sins and is essentially due to inherit the throne of Emet, as a Princess of Emet and now Queen-Regent, until her child has reached majority and can take over as either King or Queen.

 **54.) Deserve:** The thing is, in order to destroy the Jedi Order, Xanatos must either do one of three things – raze the Coruscanti Temple so utterly that the survivors will be forced to start over again, elsewhere, using the old rules (from before Ruusan), in order to survive as an organization at all; make alliance with the truly Dark forces that he knows are already conspiring to bring down not only the Order but the Republic, as such, as well; or steal the Chosen One and use his power to force a change, by whatever means necessary, according to the will of the Force, until the Order is served by those who are true Jedi Bendu once more – and, while he’s angry enough, at this point, to try the first one, as long as Obi-Wan isn’t there when it happens, he knows that the third would be best, even if, by this point, the galaxy deserves no better than the second (he isn’t so deprived as to ally himself with Sith, no matter what Qui-Gon or the Grand Master might believe); yet, he has a bad feeling that the sheer idiocy of the High Council and the Senate are going to so lend themselves to the advantage of those forces of the insidious Dark that he fears he may run out of time far before he can properly manage to finesse anything, and that the Order and Republic will both end up self-destructing and leaving him with vengeance still unclaimed.

 **55.) Game:** It’s a delicate and chancy game to play, the gradual shifting of the worthy on Telos IV to Emet’s sacred world, Ninhursag, and to positions of power and authority on the binary worlds, Alawwal and Alakhir, so that all those who are left on Telos are either those who are plainly deserving of ruination and the reaping of the bitter fruits of vendetta or else those who may yet prove to be either fully deserving of his vengeance or else worthy of being removed from the path of his justice; he works at it diligently, though, patiently and craftily, with the help of his (seemingly stronger than ever, after her tribulations, though damaged in some ways, to be sure, her strength of character such that he is sure she will, in the end, take no truly lasting harm from her experiences, however terrible he’s certain that they were, given the night terrors she sometimes suffers from, calming only when he comes to hold her and promise that Ulixeos can never hurt her again and that they are going to have their just vengeance on those who permitted or added to her suffering) utterly dedicated and deviously intelligent sister, who is nothing if not prepared to exact the very last drop of just recompense owed her and those she, as the sole survivor of the Labara family’s murderous schemes for Telos, represents of the Labara legacy: between the two of them and the proper ministers of state (no matter what their titles), he is quite certain that they will, eventually, manage to get it done, leaving Telos ripe for the picking.

 **56.) Contingency:** The boy he sired for the sake of his father’s peace of mind, Ousire, loses all reason to be of immediate interest him, when Crion is killed – he is both superfluous, now, and possibly damaging to his plans (his _duty_ ), all things considered, given the child’s relative lack of Force-sensitivity and his technically illegitimate birth and the fact that he is beginning to suspect that the woman he’d thought he chose randomly now appears to be an agent of some power that, if not precisely Dark, is, at the very lest, possibly bent towards evil ends, and very likely has been raising the boy in a manner that Xanatos will not approve of and which would probably interfere with the boy’s ability to adjust to any life on Telos or Emet – and, besides, leaving him and his mother essentially be, as a sort of eventual contingency plan for breeding trouble for the Jedi, in the future, makes much more sense than trying to bring him here now and going to all the trouble of legitimizing him now that Xanatos is finally free of the Order’s rules and can legally wed for however long a time it might be necessary to sire legitimate (and Force-sensitive) heirs of his own, especially given his plans for Telos and Emet and the fact that the closest thing to a surviving heir of the old royal line of Emet is a young and unmarried woman who, as a teenager, was packed off to a temple on Ninhursag to serve as a devotee on the sacred planet, in an attempt to dissuade an unsuitable suitor from trying to pursue her, with her later willingly choosing to stay there for her own safety when the Labara clan began to make its move on the throne, meaning she is at least somewhat culpable for that family’s unchallenged rise to power, as she did nothing to stop it or to warn others of their evil intentions, and therefore deserves no better than to be used as one of his pawns.

 **57.) Inherit:** The easiest, quickest, most legally sound way of combining the wealth of two lines from two separate systems is to wed the heirs of both families together; thus, after she’s been restored to the title of Princess of Emet, Xanatos quickly arranges a limited, three-year contract with the sole survivor of the previous Emetarian royal line, Lilura Yzabelia Tietphaea, makes sure to impregnate her immediately with a boy, since his sister has given birth to a girl-child, Ailsydrestia Carouen Adi-Ai-Aiji-Labarum (that part of her surname designating her paternal lineage altered to indicate her mother’s status as a bound concubine), keeps her in a lavish suite in the main royal palace, on Alawwal, near to his own sister and her baby girl (who, thankfully, already looks eerily like her, showing little physical trace of her father), allows her to have the boy naturally, as she wishes (to honor the light returning to Emet, as she insists), sheds not even a tear when the baby is healthy and thrives and she dies of blood loss less than an hour after his birth (she’s the one who was foolish enough to insist on a natural birth, and she’s the one who agreed to marry him and give him an heir, despite knowing he cared nothing for her, out of her own desire to secure her wealth and position and safety, after all! Why should he waste any of his time feeling sorry for someone so patently selfish?), gives the boy (tellingly named Criosumen Jamadai Adi-Ai-Aiji, solely in honor of his family) to his sister to arrange for him to be raised up properly, and then calmly draws up the contract to wed his boy to her girl when they are both of age (though of course is also certain to see to it that their offspring will be sure to take all of the proper precautions, when it comes to their heirs, and be careful not to allow any other closely related matches to be made for at least a couple of generations, just to be on the safe side, since they are, after all, cousins, and it would be a pity to see such an elegant solution to a problem ruined down the line from problems associated with inbreeding), so that they will jointly inherit both the throne of Emet and all that entails, from the girl’s side, as well as all of the accumulated wealth of his own parents, with all that entails, from the boy’s side.

 **58.) Sane:** Occasionally, he gets the feeling that he may not be entirely sane, any longer, by the strictest definition of the word – most beings, he thinks, would worry about someone with as much power both in the Force and in several far more material senses and as great a need for revenge as he has, that he has compiled elaborate lists of nestling strategies within schemes within plots within contingencies within plans, to see to it that those responsible for the near annihilation of his family will suffer as they should, whether he necessary survives to see all of his just vengeance meted out or not – whenever he starts to worry about it overly much, though, he remembers that it was Qui-Gon and the Jedi (especially Yoda) and the Force and the Senate and the Labara and their minions and even some of his own Telosian people who made him this way, and tells himself that, if the galaxy were not prepared to suffer the consequences of the wrath of the monster it’s created in him, then the Force should not have ever permitted him to become twisted and obsessed in the way he has.

 **59.) Memory:** Aikantian is a relatively small, somewhat haphazardly settled and developed, fairly nondescript moon in orbit around a not very much bigger or more glamorous or widely known, visited, or settled planet by the name of Melahira, notable really only for the fact that so many important and powerful personages from various wealthy corporations and trade guilds seem to have been visiting it, of late – which fact happens to account, largely, for his visit there – so he isn’t expecting anyone on the Mid Rim world to know him, much less to call out to him across a busy marketplace, and is quite startled when that’s precisely what happens, especially since he doesn’t immediately recognize the too thin, slightly bedraggled seeming human male who’s earnestly trying to get his attention; yet, when the young man hurries eagerly up to him, when he obligingly pauses to wait for him to catch up, only to instantly, urgently ask if Qui-Gon is with him and then all but visibly deflate when he disdainfully replies that he and Qui-Gon parted ways long ago, Xanatos flashes on a memory of his former Master, whole body contorted in ecstasy, and a blue-eyed, raven-haired boy shove face-first into the mattress, motion so rough that blood would be smeared down Qui-Gon’s glistening length and a thin trickle of it would snake its way down between the boy’s ghostly pale thighs, afterwards, and understands at once who the young man has to be . . . and, once he grasps why Ila Shoserkan is asking after Qui-Gon, he immediately knows exactly how he can use this unexpected meeting to his advantage.

 **60.) Slave:** Apparently, just prior to the outbreak of the Mandalorian Wars, the slave-owning humanocentric aristocrats of the Senex-Juvex Sector hired the white-eyed Arkanians to make for them a genetically crafted near-human worker class for the fields on one of the worlds they kept primarily for agricultural use, requesting that these workers would all appear male but be fully hermaphroditic and able to reproduce amongst themselves – the idea apparently being that they would therefore have all the advantages of a more densely muscled all male workforce and none of the drawbacks, chief among them the lack of viability of a constant source of new workers – and, while the delivered product at first seemed all that had been desired, within a few hurriedly bred generations it became clear that not only were the near-human workers far too intelligent and therefore prone to rebellion, but that, because of the grafted nature of their hermaphroditic systems and the roughness of the conditions in which they were required to work and live (given that their masters weren’t about to pay for truly proper nutrition and safe shelter for their slaves – pregnant with the next generation of slaves or not! – much less readily available and sufficient medical care), they were unlikely to survive the birth of more than one or perhaps two children (not to mention the fact that there were countless problems caused by bad miscarriages and stillbirths) and the children weren’t all that liable to survive to adulthood, either, meaning that they simply weren’t viable as a race of self-perpetuating workers, not at all likely to be able to survive in numbers great enough under the conditions that they were working and living in to make trying to keep them worthwhile, rendering the entire experiment pretty much a miserable failure (considering how much it cost to get them designed and delivered), in the opinion of their owners, and, having been deemed a failed experiment, they were therefore slated to be destroyed and replaced by a new designer humanoid worker, heavily modified to be more docile and less intelligent/independent and more hardy overall to balance out the problem of needing separate breeders, when the conflict erupted to the point where it engulfed Karreyn, the system that the slaves were being kept on and, being both intelligent and desperate, the workers hijacked an incoming cruiser that’d been damaged in battle and was coming in for repairs, fleeing before they could be liquidated, eventually arriving on a Colonies world, Orgoide, that had been so decimated by conflict that the survivors were more than willing to take in refugees from the war, if only to gain a little more safety from higher numbers . . . a trick that worked surprisingly well, the former slaves eventually growing so numerous and prosperous that several clans eventually relocated first to Gheish, in the Inner Rim, and then to Hainthen, out in the Expansion Region.

 **61.) Superstition:** The Qerasijo, as they call themselves, look perfectly human (if rather tall, even for men, with quite long torsos and slightly elongated pelvises), at a cursory glance, even undressed, and test surprisingly near what is generally considered to be the acceptable range of percentage of differentiation allowed for the classification of human norm – there having been more combining of male and female primary sex characteristics and rearranging of a few basic organs to make room for a slightly modified uterus and a suitable tract reaching to and leading from it (inconspicuously tucked behind the scrotum, far enough back on the perineum to be mistaken for a certain other opening and channel within the body – itself located slightly higher up between the buttocks than is usual for humans or any other known variant of near-human – especially, apparently, by a human or non-Qerasijoan near-human male partner unaware of the peculiarities of Qerasijoan physiology and not particularly looking to discover them) than actual genetic modification of the standard human genome involved in their basic design – so they’re often mistaken for regular human men, even though they are technically fully functional hermaphrodites; furthermore, the modifications made to them to allow them to successfully combine both male and female sexual reproduction organs also make it possible for them to crossbreed with a surprisingly wide variety of humans and near-humans, which is, apparently, what happened with this particular young Qerasijoan and Qui-Gon Jinn, to the extent that the young man found himself, at the tender age of just barely fifteen (Xanatos’ oh so very self-righteous former Master having seduced, deflowered, and impregnated Ila when he was only fourteen), being not only cast out of his family but literally run out of the whole association of clans of his people on Hainthen, for the apparently unforgivably terrible sins of having fornicated with a foreigner outside of wedlock or contracted handfasting and having come away not only pregnant but carrying twins . . . something that literally almost never happens with their kind, their physiology being too specialized and a little bit too delicately balanced to survive a multiple birth, their bodies naturally rejecting any such pregnancies should they attempt to take root, resulting in the rather odd superstition among the Qerasijo that twins (and other children born to humans and near-humans by multiple births) are hated of the gods for having committed the crime of incest in the womb, meaning that they could legally wed no others and, or so the Qerasijo believed, resulting in miscarriages as a way for the gods to avoid such an abomination as a necessary marriage of siblings; thus, the fact that the young man not only survived his extremely abnormal pregnancy but gave birth to a perfectly healthy pair of extremely obviously non-Qerasijoan twins, including a literally quite visibly patently sexually differentiated single-sexed boy and just as single-sexed girl, left him considered such a godless pariah among his people that he had to take the children and relocate to another world, far enough away from the other planets largely settled by his people to avoid being hunted down and killed as an evil sorcerous warlock, his children burned alive as evil spirits or demons trying to spread suffering and darkness and chaos and strife in the galaxy.

 **62.) Offer:** It’s as though the Force itself is smiling on him: not only has Xanatos been delivered an ex-beau of Qui-Gon’s obviously seduced at an illegal age (given how much older Qui-Gon was at the time, anyway. As a teen – despite barely being fourteen, at the time – Ila would only just be considered barely legal for those within his own age range who likely wouldn’t be able to take any kind of undue advantage of his youth, and only on some, not all, Republic worlds. The enormous gap in ages and Ila’s extreme youth would automatically make Qui-Gon guilty of at least statutory rape on practically _all_ Republic worlds) and then abandoned, pregnant with twins for which he would be not only thrown out of his home but placed in danger of being hunted down and slain by his own people as a supposedly willing vessel and doorway for evil; he also has the apparently far more human than not healthy twin children of said seduced ex-lover, a boy and a girl who’ve already been legally bound by a marriage contract that will be finalized when they reach the age of majority on whatever world they happen to be living on, at that time, for supposedly having committed incest in the womb (as the superstitious Qerasijo believe, Ila having apparently gone through with the contracting in an attempt to placate his people before finally being forced to snatch up his children and flee for their lives), and who’re so strong in the Force that Xanatos is frankly shocked that some Jedi or another (or someone far Darker in nature than he) hasn’t been drawn to Aikantian, because of them; plus, to make it even more deliciously perfect, when Ila (who quietly but firmly informs him that he self-identifies as a male, despite being the mother of twins, thereby solving his momentarily dilemma regarding how to properly call him) learns of the fact that Qui-Gon never thought of him again and has doubtlessly treated literally hundreds (if not more) of others just as carelessly as he did Ila, not only does the young Qerasijoan’s lingering desperate hope and romanticized love instantly turn to affronted fury and shame and disgust and hatred, he and the children are so obviously grateful to receive an offer from Xanatos to come home with him (since Qui-Gon’s victims should all stick together, as Xanatos explains it, prompting a round of questioning that allows him to explain what Qui-Gon did to him and his family on Telos IV, solidifying Ila’s bad opinion of the man) that all three of them are clearly willing to become his allies, even to the point of Ila deliberately permitting himself and his children to be incorporated into his plans to eventually extract true justice from Qui-Gon Jinn for his many evil deeds.

 **63.) Strong:** His sister isn’t nearly as strong as he is, in the Force, but she’s certainly no slouch, either, and neither is her girl (her father having, apparently, been at least moderately Force-sensitive and had the good grace to pass it along to his child), and, between them and his own boy and the young Qerasijoan (who has a little less natural talent than would’ve been required to bring him to the attention of the Order, as a possible initiate, as a child, though he possesses enough sensitivity to the Force’s currents – once he’s been taught enough mental discipline and control – for some weak telekinesis and subtle manipulation of emotions and thoughts amongst the unguarded and the weak-willed, with more than enough control over himself and his body’s relation to his immediate surroundings to make him a shockingly formidable fighter, if pushed, his ability sufficient to allow him, with a little luck and surprise on his side, to stand against most Jedi, if it should ever come to pass that he should be faced with one and backed into a corner) and his twins, Xanatos ends up essentially training half a dozen of his relatives and closest allies as Jedi once might have been (before Ruusan, anyway), in the years he spends working towards gaining his revenge.

 **64.) Class:** The Chun family is one that turned on his father and himself, in that crucial period of time when Qui-Gon was going on his assumptions and, if the people had only stood firm by their beliefs and honor and what they knew to be true and reacted accordingly, they still could have had their legal vengeance on the Labara and their allies and not allowed Qui-Gon to run rampant and murder the Governor in cold blood, so he feels absolutely no compunction whatsoever about using the youngling Bruck Chun (who is a spoiled brat in any case, with a violent temper and a bad case of self-righteousness that reminds him entirely too much of Qui-Gon’s particular brand of hypocrisy) as one of his spies in the Jedi Temple to keep tabs on Obi-Wan, since the boy is, after all, in the same age group, even if he isn’t even approaching the same class as Obi-Wan.

 **65.) Tyrant:** He knows what Qui-Gon is going to do even before he does it (the man can never stand to have proof of his own failings around him, after all) and so, for a while, he hopes that Dooku will be able to claim Obi-Wan as his Padawan learner and therefore save him from being hurt even more by that traitorous tyrant – Dooku, at least, knows enough about Telosian honor to understand that his former apprentice likely made a terrible mistake, with Crion, and had the decency both to be appalled by Qui-Gon and the High Council and the Senate’s actions and to openly pledge both his friendship and the support of all of Serenno to Xanatos and his family, should he ever need or want for anything, in the immediate aftermath of the Governor’s murder – but unfortunately that terrible little green goblin has other ideas, and so he must hurry to act, to get everything in place, so that he and Obi-Wan can be properly reintroduced.

 **66.) Panic:** He has planned for _every_ contingency possible, it seems, but this one: Obi-Wan calls to him like a siren, the beauty of him and the terrible throbbing ache of the damage Qui-Gon and the Order has inflicted on him pulling at Xanatos with the same kind of implacable steadiness of a magnet calling iron, and it affects him so strongly that he can’t think, can’t remember his plans, can’t do _anything_ but yearn, dumbly, the whole of him burning just to reach out and claim what is rightfully his, the one who the Force promises him with each and every passing moment is meant to belong to him and him alone, so blinded by the need to do something ( _anything!_ ) to reach out and to make things right for Obi-Wan again that he can’t even keep to his own script and ends up with an unconscious and badly wounded boy on his hands because of his panic.

 **67.) Blaze:** For once in his life, Xanatos is the one who ends up feeling as though he’s the one behaving like a pervert (and, worse, not being able to bring himself to particularly care if he has been), because once the teenager is unconscious before him (stretched out on the floor like an offering, spread out before him like a promise, seemingly just deeply asleep and not in any discomfort or distress or pain at all), all he wants to do is peel back the layers of uniform that marks Obi-Wan as a Jedi initiate and touch every square millimeter of that perfect pale skin, map and re-map the boy’s body with fingertips and lips and tongue and more, touch and taste and kiss and caress and just breathe the boy in, until he knows Obi-Wan utterly, completely, no part of him whatsoever left unexplored, unknown, the unnatural and hideously ugly Force-powered bindings that would otherwise keep the teen’s flesh from responding naturally to the touch of love all unbound and stripped away from him piece by piece, with each new mapping and re-mapping, until finally Obi-Wan could blaze back to full consciousness with his body describing a perfect arc of ecstasy, Xanatos the first and only one to ever see him so completely undone by feeling, no thought left to the boy but love and Xanatos, and Force ( _Force!_ ), he wants – he just – Obi-Wan – he _needs_ – the desire is so strong (Obi-Wan is temptation personified, love and light given flesh) that he doesn’t know how to resist, can’t stop himself from sinking to his knees and crawling up over the lax form of the boy to gather him up in his arms, face buried in the crook of his neck, hands roaming through criminally short silken hair, across the slender (but already starting to widen and gain a warrior’s muscles) expanse of shoulders, back, waist, more, fingers working their way with feverish haste through far too many layers of rough wool and heavy linen and thin cotton clothing to seek out skin (soft, satiny, hot to the touch, burning, like there is a great light blazing away just under the surface, warming him through and through, making him want to burrow closer, to plaster himself up against that warmth, bask in it, revel in it, soak it up, stroke that skin to see if his touch can coax the light, the warmth, up closer to the surface, closer to him), shaking as he shifts closer, _closer_ , pressing his face to the slender column of the boy’s neck, breathing in the intoxicating mix of dizzying muskiness and freshness and sweetness of his flesh, raising up to rub his cheek against Obi-Wan’s, sliding his face slowly back and forth across him, not quite daring to kiss those slackly parted silky lips, but unable not to touch, lips sliding lingeringly down the sharp line of his jaw, brushing worshipful kisses behind as he goes, tongue tip just barely slipping out when his mouth closes over the dimpled point of Obi-Wan’s chin, darting out to touch, taste, nestle comfortably for a few moments in the cleft there, teeth grazing flesh as he nudges forward to tilt the boy’s face up, sliding down under his jaw to slip back down his throat, lips seeking out the jugular, pressing in hard, desperately wanting to leave a mark but knowing that he shouldn’t, knowing he can’t (at least not yet), his heart breaking as the uncertain murmuring voices of the clearly uneasy guards finally filter in past the deafening roar of blood in his ears and the seemingly unending crescendo of ringing affirmation from the Force, the officers clearly debating whether or not they need to intervene and whether or not what Xanatos is doing is a violation, even if this is the remarkable boy all members of Offworld Corporation know was essentially stolen from Xanatos, by Qui-Gon’s actions on Telos, their concern hitting him like a bucket of ice-water, shaming him (and making him wonder, momentarily, if it’s like this for Qui-Gon, sometimes, the desire to touch someone so all-consuming that it’s very like a kind of madness) so badly that he manages to stop himself from going any further, though his whole body shakes with thwarted need and the Force urgently screams at him not to let go of Obi-Wan, shuddering and trembling like a man with palsy as he pulls himself backwards and stands back up, dragging the boy with him as he goes, arms closed so convulsively tight around him that he can’t pry himself away, unable to stop the tears from coming as he makes himself hold still, forces himself not to fight as the wary-eyed guards approach, to take Obi-Wan away from him.

 **68.) Board:** Offworld Corporation is and is not his: a tool he created for the express purpose of damaging Telos IV and punishing those who failed his father and their own honor, while the organization’s profits all nominally go to him (or at least into the trust fund he has arranged for eventual transfer to his firstborn, when Ousire is of age) and he is its titular head, as a part of the failsafes of his plans (should, by some terrible twist of fate, the Jedi manage to ever get their hands on him and attempt to turn him once again into their puppet), the company operates under the orders of a board of directors comprised of allies handpicked, loyal, and utterly devoted to the need for vengeance and scattered in various locations around the galaxy, to keep them safe from any outside (Jedi) interference, with their orders being irrefutable and unalterable, even by Xanatos, once any major operation has entered into play; thus, there is, unfortunately, absolutely nothing he can do – short of simply killing (or at least permanently disabling) every last guard so that he can snatch Obi-Wan back up again and run, a possibility that tempts him far more than it logically should, given the very high probability that Obi-Wan would likely rebel and bolt at the first possibility and it would completely ruin the rest of his plans for Bandomeer (which, while seemingly focused towards that world’s destruction, are in fact meant to act primarily as a cover, to allow him to free the numerous poor wretched rejected Jedi initiates forced to labor like slaves in the Jedi’s Agri-Corps and take them back home with him, where they will be safe and truly free and permitted to continue to pursue their training as true Jedi Bendu, if they so wish) – to keep the Offworld Corporation guards from seizing Obi-Wan (as a supposed sneak thief) and consigning him to the mines, both to remove him from Qui-Gon (in the process testing Xanatos’ former Master to see how willing Qui-Gon will be to betray the child’s trust, in order to get rid of him, as he so obviously wishes to do) and put him somewhere he’ll be (relatively) safe during the remainder of the current course of action, until it will be safe for Xanatos to retrieve him and take him back home with him, too.

 **69.) Think:** It’s the safest course of action Xanatos can think of, at the time, to allow the guards to seize Obi-Wan and put him in the mines – it’ll keep him away from Qui-Gon (whose sense of covetousness he has – as he unfortunately won’t learn until it’s too late – misjudged, in thinking that he would neither notice nor truly care about the boy’s disappearance, much less be roused enough from his own petty concerns to worry about or attempt to seek after Obi-Wan . . . though perhaps he simply underestimated Obi-Wan’s ability to charm others into loving or at least wanting to possess if not precisely to care for him, all things considered) and any more attempts at interference from the High Council, through Yoda; and it should also keep him temporarily away from Xanatos and so out of range of immediate temptation, where Xanatos (hopefully) won’t want (ache) so damned much to just peel him like a succulent fruit and devour him whole, at a distance great enough, perhaps, for him to recover his balance, his dignity, his ability to think and function and not be overwhelmed by sheer want and need, and so arrive at a way that he could get close enough to Obi-Wan again without similarly losing all higher brain function and so retain enough intelligence and patience to tell him properly about Qui-Gon and the High Council and why Obi-Wan needs to stay as far away as possible from those treacherous monsters and join Xanatos, instead – but he’s forgotten to take Obi-Wan’s intelligence and ability and the devotion of his loyal heart into consideration, and it is that, more than any other single thing, which ultimately ends up leading to the thwarting of this particular part of his overall plans.

 **70.) Busy:** If he had only known about Melida/Daan while it was happening, he would’ve gone after the boy himself, after Qui-Gon abandoned him (his pillow friend, Tahl, apparently being much more important to the self-centered villain than either the mission and the welfare of the peoples of that world or his new young apprentice), and to hell with his duties to his own students and family (whether Alesdair and Kelyla – who seem to have taken mostly after Qui-Gon, in terms of their physical growth and, thus, the advancement of their strength and endurance – seemed determined to half destroy the palace while attempting to master the finer points of telekinesis or not and whether Ailsydrestia was having some serious control issues because of the high fever caused by a nasty bout of some strain of flu he’d never come across before or not), but Bruck – evidently too busy gloating and trying to catch Qui-Gon’s eye to report in properly – failed to tell him about it (and his other contacts in and around the vast Temple complex apparently weren’t highly enough placed to know all the latest gossip about missions in progress, other than to know when and to whom individual missions were likely to be assigned and, sometimes, much later, whether or not those missions had been successful) until it was already too late and Qui-Gon had been sent back after the boy (ordered, apparently, by an indignant Tahl, among others, including Dooku and, surprisingly enough, most of the members of the High Council, who apparently feel that the boy deserves another chance, considering the circumstances, even if none of them are brave enough or just enough to admit that Qui-Gon is the one clearly in the wrong, for having abandoned the boy mid-mission in the first place, just so he could fuss over his wounded sometimes lover), and so he unfortunately misses out on what’s probably been one of the best opportunities so far, since Bandomeer, to steal the boy away . . . which means, when the time comes, that he doesn’t feel even the slightest bit of compunction about sacrificing Bruck Chun, especially since (with Chun’s sacrifice) it means that no one will (or should, anyway) be able to figure out that he’s not trying overly hard to actually blow up the Temple, at least not yet.

 **71.) Careful:** He can’t quite avoid the thought that, if the fools truly believe that he cannot tell the difference between Obi-Wan and Garen Muln (or even, for that matter, between Qui-Gon and the much slenderer, if basically of the same height, Master Ali-Alann), they deserve no better than to have their precious Temple brought down around their ears by some of the objects that they so revere; however, since he’d rather die than to truly physically harm Obi-Wan and he feels as if he owes something of a debt of gratitude to the Muln boy for watching over Obi-Wan and helping him through all those night terrors, not to mention the aftermath of what Qui-Gon did to him after the events on Telos IV, he forces himself to keep his temper and to be very, very careful to seem to sincerely want to do the Order and Temple harm without actually being so clever as to fail to leave Obi-Wan a way to save both his friend and himself, as well as all of his other friends in the Temple, at least for the moment.

 **72.) Truth:** The only good thing about Obi-Wan insisting on coming with Qui-Gon to Telos IV is that it positions him almost perfectly to come to the decision to leave with Xanatos, once he’s come to know what Qui-Gon is truly like and how corrupt the Order’s leaders really are – all he has to do is get the boy away from Qui-Gon long enough to tell him the truth (Obi-Wan may not want to believe him, but with a truth-sense like Xanatos knows the boy must have, to be able to function at all on more diplomatic missions, he’ll have no choice but to know that Xanatos is telling the truth, no other option but to believe him and so choose to go with him), and Obi-Wan will almost certainly take care of the rest, himself – his plans for punishing the guilty Telosians have already advanced so far and so fast that the world is actually somewhat dangerous and it makes him a little nervous to think about the boy being there, without him right there with him to offer protection and guidance, especially since he still needs to keep up the appearance of merely being a greed-addled, power-hungry, blood-lusting fool, so that Qui-Gon won’t sense any larger design behind his actions and so arrive at the truth of his plans (and attempt to wreck them, as he doubtlessly would immediately and quite viciously try to do).

 **73.) Whole:** Capturing them is almost too easy (something he will later mentally beat himself up over, for not taking closer note of), and getting Obi-Wan alone, afterwards, is merely a matter of taking him out of the prison cell and back to the place he keeps as his residence when he is on planet (which isn’t all that often, anymore, considering how far his plans have advanced. Seeing what he has been forced to do, in the name of justice, hurts his heart, for, despite everything, he still loves Telos, still loves his people, desperately hoping that the Telosians will somehow yet prove their worthiness and negate his need to permit his plans to come to full fruition, in regards to them and the planet, for the betrayal that allowed Qui-Gon to so casually murder Crion): he hurts the boy badly, then, when he tells him the truth – it can’t be helped, and he knows that, but _Force_ , the sheer anguished torment of the boy! If feels like the kind of inverse nexus point of the Force’s energies that sometimes exist in places where Sith or Dark Jedi have been cut down or murdered, or where a great enough number of individuals with sufficient strength in the Force have all died suddenly, in great pain and shock, an echo of their suffering seemingly permanently imprinting itself on the fabric of the Force – but Obi-Wan nonetheless comes to him willingly (weeping helplessly, true, but moving under his own steam, according to his own will, despite the uncontrollable shaking of his body) and falls into his open arms, sheltering there gladly and pledging to follow him, to help Xanatos expose Qui-Gon and the High Council and the Senate and everyone else who’s responsible for Telos IV’s now all but inevitable ruination, as part of Xanatos’ legal recompense for crimes committed against him and his, and, for a few brief but gloriously, blissfully _right_ hours, Xanatos feels as if he were finally truly whole again.

 **74.) Unsure:** He abruptly comes to himself in the dome where Katharsis and the lottery are played, with the crowd just faltering in their ritualistic chanting of his name, the enormous screens normally used to advertise Katharsis and show the races and contests instead showing a case of thermal detonators marked with the Offworld Corporation symbol, feeling as if he’s been beaten so badly that several of his ribs are not only cracked but entirely broken, unsure of how in the Sith hells he’s gotten there and why he’s standing there – he remembers nothing past when he curled up together with Obi-Wan on his bed, as they used to do in the Temple, when Xanatos was still a Padawan and Obi-Wan was a new initiate, telling the exhausted teenager to go to sleep and that tomorrow would be soon enough for them to begin their work together, Obi-Wan sighing as he pillowed his head on Xanatos’ chest and murmured goodnight (with the addendum, slightly slurred by tiredness but still clearly comprehensible, that he loves Xani, the avowal making him feel as though he could easily take on the whole of the Order and the Senate and even the rest of the galaxy and still win), Xanatos carding his right hand soothingly, repetitively, through Obi-Wan’s hair, to encourage him to go to sleep – able to sense Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan somewhere out in the crowd and filled with such a feeling of dread that he knows, at once, that something terrible must have happened and that something fairly nasty is about to happen, too, bewildered as to how or why but painfully certain that he’s not going to come out of this situation unscathed.

 **75.) Trouble:** It _has_ to have been either the Sith himself or else the very best of his agents who interfered, because while he certainly wouldn’t put it past Qui-Gon to rape Obi-Wan’s mind and soul _again_ , in order to force him to forget everything he learned from Xanatos and most of the events of the mission to Telos IV (with false memories apparently being substituted to cover up at least part of the gaping hole left behind from the missing chunk of time), he doesn’t think the man would have either the amount of necessary control to do such a thing nor the imagination to have come up with the series of events that supposedly befell him and his Padawan since their arrival on Telos, and (with the possible exception of Yoda, who he can’t quite bring himself to believe is capable of such deliberately planned out and coldly executed elaborate maleficence) he can’t think of anyone else he’s probably managed to make both angry and frightened enough to go to all the trouble it’s doubtlessly taken to not only steal Obi-Wan from him _again_ but also to rob him of the satisfaction of knowing that Qui-Gon knows that what he’s done is about to come out and that the vengeance Xanatos has been and will be continuing to extract from the man is both wholly legal and entirely justified.

 **76.) Knowledge:** He’s stolen both a great number and large variety of things from the Jedi Temple at Coruscant, over the years – with the right contacts (like Bruck, when he was still useful) and the right slicers, to bypass any actual security measures, a ridiculous amount of things can be removed from the Temple complex with no one necessarily ever being the wiser – and expanded his knowledge of the Force in areas that the Order has been too frightened of or too concerned about controlling to allow to become widespread by permitting them to be taught in regular classrooms in the crèche or even allowed as individual areas of study by specific Knights and Masters for centuries, now, and many of his most desperate and/or outlandish contingency plans are based upon the certain knowledge that he doesn’t actually need to keep his physical body alive in order to complete his plans or claim Obi-Wan as his own; yet, despite all of his schemes and outrageously expanded upon back-up plans, he’s not truly expecting to ever have to make use of that knowledge, and it makes him hesitate at a critical moment in which he could have used that information to escape this sudden and extremely nasty turn of events by simply hitching a sort of ride on a nearby sentient being, his consciousness and soul – his spirit, the true essence of himself – latching on to another (willing vessel or not) until proper arrangements could be made to transfer him to another, more appropriate body.

 **77.) Decision:** He’s too badly injured to be sure enough that he can fight his way past Qui-Gon to get to Obi-Wan (who is injured, all but disabled by a badly wrenched ankle, and so cannot be compelled to simply come to him, even if he could by some miracle make his way past the boy’s formidable shields, now that he believes Xanatos is a villain again, to try it), especially with the acid pool behind him and the strange man and woman on the swoops coming in behind that, doubtlessly to flank him on either side, if he tries to bolt, so there’s really only three choices, as to what he can do, regarding how he can proceed: he can go down to the acid pit and use the Force to shield his body and trust it will take long enough for Qui-Gon’s paranoia to make him think of bringing someone to try to dredge the pit, to make sure Xanatos is truly gone, to allow him to get out and get away before he can become too exhausted to keep the acid from actually touching his body; he can allow his body to go down into the pit and throw his spirit out to the nearest, most compatible vessel for it, even though the trauma of it could result in serious problems for Obi-Wan or possibly even force him to eject Qui-Gon’s spirit to make room for himself and so cause Obi-Wan tremendous grief and trouble; or he can let his body go down into the pit and trust an inanimate object close to him to serve as a temporary vessel, until another sentient being able to act as an appropriate vessel comes along and lets him hitch a ride until he can arrange for a new body altogether; yet, since he’d rather die than cause Obi-Wan damage or pain, he’s not entirely sure that he’s strong enough to be able to hold the acid back for as long as he might need to, if Qui-Gon senses something amiss and waits there for someone to come to dredge the pit or tries to use the Force to make sure he’s truly been eaten alive by the acid, and this isn’t exactly a remote location, all things considered, meaning he’s not likely to be stuck in any temporary vessel for very long, two of those three choices are far more problematic than the third, and so the decision isn’t all that hard to make, even though it burns him that he has to do it.

 **78.) Character:** He stays in character right up until the very end, sneering as he proclaims that he is Qui-Gon’s greatest failure and that he’ll have to live both with that and with this (there’s no need to do or say anything that might make the man suspicious, at this late date, after all, and if Qui-Gon is able to feel guilt or shame for Xanatos’ apparent demise, well, it’ll certainly be no less than what he deserves to feel!), and, flinging his lightsaber at Qui-Gon’s head to distract him from the fact that he’s shaking several objects of extreme personal worth that have been close to him for many, many years out into the lumpy hardened lava behind him, motion hidden by his long black cloak, he turns for one last look at Obi-Wan before, with a smile, taking two steps backwards and, with a graceful leap, allowing himself to fall backwards into the pool of acid, reaching out to the Force even as he begins to move.

 **79.) Relocation:** It’s not exactly a tricky matter, to send the consciousness or the soul up out of the body – Jedi do one or the other quite often, after all, when they travel by far-sight or delve deeply into the minds/souls of others or take part in battle melds and/or battle meditation, hell, even when they form bonds with others and use those bonds to delve into the Force together, by having a shared session of deep meditation – but it’s somewhat more difficult to do both at once, in the same instant, with the two united in such a way that nothing of the self is left behind in the flesh, nothing remaining in the body to make it animate or sentient or even truly ensouled and so fully, properly alive, and then to retain awareness and purpose enough not to simply allow the bright beckoning glow of the Force to enthrall and seduce the mind until one sinks down within its loving embrace and vanishes, dissolving there and so becoming one with the powerful flows of the Force, but instead to quite purposefully direct the incorporeal self into a physical object and then anchor there securely, sinking down within it and making a home for the self there, in that vessel, as if it were the true flesh of the body and meant to house the mind and soul or spirit of one’s individual self; it certainly helps, though, if one has practiced the skill before, has an object to go down into that is extremely well-known, all the way down to the arrangement of its atoms, and has no other option but to perform such a relocation of the spirit with full success.

 **80.) Temporary:** By the time his body becomes airborne, he has already vacated his flesh for the last time and is making the journey down not into the broken signet ring from Crion, which he has kept with him ever since Qui-Gon sliced it off of his father’s hand (along with his fingers) in order to get close enough to deliver a killing blow, and which Qui-Gon would doubtlessly suspect and so destroy, were he to somehow sense that it had been used to become the temporary seat of Xanatos’ spirit, but instead the focus stone that his mother gave him, so many years ago, when he first declared to her that he wished to become a Jedi and so needed her aid to help him convince Crion to allow him to go to the Temple with Qui-Gon, which he has carried with him faithfully ever since, using often both as a worry stone, a touchstone, and a meditative focus or lens for the concentration of his mind and power; yet, despite the swiftness of the transfer and in spite of the fact that he most certainly doesn’t experience the pain associated with the dissolution of his one time body, it seems that nothing can save him from the experience of Obi-Wan’s soul-shattering agony, as he watches, helplessly, unable to do more than cry out in horror and denial (his instinctive attempt to reach out into the Force to try to stop Xanatos, to catch his body and so save him from the acid, harshly slapped down by Qui-Gon, though, in his suffering, he does not seem to comprehend why the Force has suddenly completely failed to respond to his will), as Xanatos appears to willfully commit suicide, rather than allow himself to be captured.

 **81.) Aware:** Xanatos is aware of things going on around him, in a vague sort of fashion – Qui-Gon’s pulse of constant, Dark satisfaction, pouring into the Force like a stream of poison into a clear stream (his abortive motion towards Xanatos, as his body fell backwards, and cry of denial nothing more than a show, not a real attempt to stop him, at all, the Force called into play for nothing but the smallest of pushes, to make sure he goes all the way down into the pit), not even a hint of remorse in him and no sympathy for his obviously devastated Padawan, either, envy and anger imperfectly hidden behind a face of shock and cool comfort as Obi-Wan openly continues to grieve; Obi-Wan such a roil of sorrow and suffering that it’s almost as if the world has ended around him, so much anguish pouring off of him as he doesn’t just weep but keens brokenly, incoherent noises of inconsolable grief pouring out of him, that the whole of the Force around him darkens and shudders and muddies itself with unbridled agony; Qui-Gon gathering up Xanatos’ lightsaber (not his true ’saber: just the one he kept with him, for show, should any Jedi cross his path) and walking over to offer Obi-Wan a hand up and some words of false sorrow and comfort, his proffered hand utterly ignored as Obi-Wan bends double against the hard earth, so that the man eventually shrugs carelessly, dismissively, and walks over to the last place Xanatos had stood, looking about and seeing at once two of the three objects he used his cape to hide the dropping of, eyes lighting up with malicious glee and triumph and covetousness as he reaches for the broken signet ring Crion once wore, a frown of puzzlement and genuine confusion furrowing his brow as he notices the bright blue focusing crystal that Obi-Wan offered him, a few days earlier, in an attempt to ask him to come back to the Order (the Ilum crystal symbolic, meant to represent a true Jedi’s pathway, rather than that of a Dark Jedi or Sith, as seemingly proclaimed by the blood-red scarlet hue of the crystal in the ’saber Xanatos always uses, in the presence of Jedi, so that they will not suspect he is, in fact, more than just another so-called fallen Jedi), before Xanatos got him back to his house and told him the truth about Qui-Gon and the Order; Obi-Wan suddenly, inexplicably _moving_ without ever seeming to truly move, a confusion of echoes in the Force as, between one blink and the next, he is suddenly simply on the ground between Qui-Gon and the crystal, snarling defiance as he snatches the object up and cradles it protectively to his heart, refusing to allow his Master to even try to touch it; Qui-Gon blinking down at Obi-Wan, too confounded by the fact that he can’t figure out how in the Sith hells the boy even got there to really reprimand him for his defiance; the strangeness of feeling Obi-Wan over him, around him, his young body crumpled squarely upon the focus stone acting as his temporary vessel, pressed up all around him but for the one side, draped over him in an oddly protective manner, as if he knows that Xanatos is in there, somehow, and is conspiring with him to keep him hidden from Qui-Gon; the eventual receding of the _sense_ and _feel_ of him, when he allows himself to be helped up (not by Qui-Gon, but by the woman, a stranger who feels like nothing at all remarkable in the Force, though her male companion is a constant ugly pulse of Darkness) and drawn away from the edge of the acid pool (his right hand landing, momentarily, squarely on the focus stone, palm lingering there for a few moments, fingers curling down around its edges, hesitating, as though he wants badly to pick the stone up and so carry Xanatos away with him, causing Xanatos to feel a momentary surge of mixed longing and panic, at the thought that he could end up with the boy, with no one else nearby suitable to use even as a temporary house for his mind and spirit), the overwhelming grief never really lessening, though, just fading as he withdraws, Qui-Gon hurrying him away as though he actually believes that removing the boy from the scene will somehow make the pain of loss less real – though his perception of the passage of time seems somewhat skewed and it’s a little odd to be _sensing_ everything through the Force instead of hearing and seeing and physically feeling things, through his body; thankfully, though, it doesn’t take long before someone comes after him, his sister, Jalmariyana, actually showing up what he thinks is only a few hours after the departure of the Jedi and the strange woman and man (she must have been on Telos, to arrive so soon, though she doesn’t often visit, having too many bad memories of the fire and her capture to want any reason to revisit them. As strong as she is in the Force, it’s entirely possible that she may have sensed that something bad was going to happen, given that she’s apparently so very close by), roaring up in a swoop and almost tumbling out of it, in her haste, calling his name out (the whole of her pulsing with mingled fury and worry and grief) as if he could still physically answer her, her voice breaking on the third repetition, panic spiking in her sharply, before she catches sight of the focus stone and runs over to snatch it up, exclaiming, "There you are!" with such a mixture of aggravation and relief that he can’t help but laugh a little, mentally, even though it sparks a torrent of reprimands mingled with spitting snarls of rage at Qui-Gon and the Jedi and the Senate and the Sith and practically everyone else under all the suns of the galaxy, as well, from her.

 **82.) Suitable:** The original idea was that, if it became necessary for him to "die" to finally get the Jedi to leave him alone, they’d arrange to have a young clone grown for him, so he wouldn’t have to worry about finding a suitable host but also wouldn’t have to worry about necessarily being recognized, either, because of the obvious age difference; unfortunately, though, there hasn’t been time to arrange for that, yet, and so they have to improvise, with him eventually compromising with his sister (who wants him to just agree to take over someone unworthy of continuing to live and not worry about it) by agreeing to transfer himself to the body of Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis, a young human norm just past fifteen years of age whose Telosian parents moved to Emet (Alakhir, to be specific) less than a year after his birth and who was in a bad speeder crash a little over seven years later and never woke up, afterwards, despite all that was done to repair his various and somewhat extensive injuries, having somehow been reduced to a seemingly permanent vegetative state, despite no damage to the brain to speak of (aside from the usual concussion and contusions, from being thrown about in the crash), his body entirely empty of consciousness and soul (Xanatos agreeing to the transfer only _after_ he has made absolutely sure that the young man’s spirit truly has already departed from his body), even though it’ll likely take him most of a year to get that body in anything approaching proper physical shape.

 **83.) Work:** He’s read about the phenomenon, of course, but he’s still surprised by the alterations that take place in the body he now occupies, the longer he is in it – the boy’s relatively dark brown hair darkening to the same shade of iridescent black as Xanatos’ own hair color and changing in texture, as well, becoming less coarse and straight and gaining body enough to wave and curl at the ends, as it grows out of its almost Padawan-seeming short cut; the eyes lightening, brightening, and becoming far more blue than the boy’s original unremarkable middling shade of bluish (with some green and some gray flecks of color mixed in with the blue), eventually gaining the exact same shade overall of glacial icy blue with striations of almost violent starfire blue and distinct rims of dark midnight blue both around the pupils and at the outermost edge of the irises; the shape of the face altering, slightly, bit by bit, the nose thinning slightly and gaining something of a slight upward tilt, the jaw lengthening slightly to allow for room for a dimple in the chin, the whole face elongating just the slightest bit overall, thinning slightly from a shape more like a heart to something more like an oval but with a distinctly pronounced jawline; etc. – the body gradually becoming more and more his, more and more natural seeming, as he comes to look more like himself, especially as he undergoes the months-long necessary regime of physical therapy, bacta and bota treatments, and meditative healing trances, both to combat the inevitable muscle atrophy and bone loss (from the body being in a coma for so very long) and to allow himself to truly get to know his new body sufficiently well to trust that he’ll be able to use the Force and fight enough to protect himself adequately, if he should need to be able to do so, the ease with which he adjusts, after only about four months, allowing him to get a surprising amount of work done, even as he’s conditioning and adjusting to his new body.

 **84.) Too Late:** The only good thing about Qui-Gon’s supposed final triumph over him coming when it did is that, irregardless of anything that the Jedi may or may not try to do for Telos IV now, it’s already far too late for anything short of the same kind of massive (and hugely expensive) restoration effort undertaken in the wake of the devastation caused during the Mandalorian Wars to save the world or the people still on it, so long as they choose to remain there, so many special interest groups representing industrial companies having already settled on Telos that they’re effectively able to begin acting as its ruling body immediately in the aftermath of Xanatos’ supposed death, factories having already polluted the once all but pristine world to such an extent that all of the national parks and sacred places are or will soon be damaged beyond repair by any but Ithorians and Jedi, the planet so thoroughly despoiled that, technically, his revenge on those who turned against his father and himself on Qui-Gon’s word alone is already complete, meaning that he no longer needs concern himself with that world or its fate or the destiny of the sentient beings residing on it.

 **85.) Notice:** The first time he sees Obi-Wan again, the boy feels distressingly like a gray void of the Force falling in upon itself (neither Light nor Dark, so much power with no focus or control, circling endlessly, trapped, a vacuum searching for a path, a purpose, that the sensation of terrifying _wrongness_ frankly horrifies him); yet, only moments after entering the room, Obi-Wan suddenly blazes painfully bright in the Force, the boy stopping dead in his tracks, eyes wide with shock, mouth moving to the shape of Xanatos’ name as Obi-Wan casts his gaze rapidly about, clearly trying to search Xanatos out, and he cannot help but smile, a little, warmed all the way down to his core, to know that Obi-Wan can still _sense_ him so easily, even in a new body (even though it may end up causing him trouble, in the end), especially since Qui-Gon doesn’t seem to notice him at all, even shaking hands with him, at one point later on in the evening, without so much as batting an eyelash, not even a flicker of recognition marring his empty serene features.

 **86.) Partner:** Though his work generally keeps him extremely busy, he’s careful to keep track of Obi-Wan and his missions as much as possible, to make sure that he’s alright and doesn’t need to be rescued (either from Qui-Gon or Yoda and the High Council or any actual enemies or threats that might arise in the course of a mission), and that’s how he finally meets Bail Organa – the young boy from his earliest dreams, the dark-eyed, black-haired, caramel-skinned child who aged like a real person would have and always seemed to be with him, learning and training and sparring and playing, over the years – and is forced not only to the conclusion that this man should have been a Jedi but that he doubtlessly would have been Xanatos’ closest friend and partner and likely a pillow friend or even more, if only he had been given over to the Order for training, as he surely should have been (given his obvious strength in the Force), the knowledge that the choice of Bail’s parents to keep him from the Temple (for the sake of politics alone, evidently!) has also saved him from the pain of "losing" Xanatos cold comfort indeed, as he basks in the warm glow of the Crown Prince of Alderaan’s presence.

 **87.) Soon:** A little less than three years after he’s gained his new body, Xanatos feels a spike of inexplicable distress through the Force that all but brings him to his knees, in the midst of a turn about his private gardens on Ninhursag (he having long since claimed a private residence there as one of the Emetarians’ so-called holy men, his connection to the Force and love of beautiful things and immense wealth and connection to the Queen-Regent apparently all that is required to receive the right to live there), and knows, suddenly, that Obi-Wan is in trouble and needs him, _soon_ , or else terrible things will surely happen.

 **88.) Hard:** The boy is not only alone on Thorad but half dead when Xanatos finds him, and Qui-Gon isn’t anywhere near enough for him to even be able to _sense_ the man, much less track the idiot down, so he does the only thing that he can, under the circumstances: he gathers the ill and wounded teenager up carefully in his arms, carries him quickly back to the transport he’s rented, and then takes him straight back to the safe house he’s arranged for, to personally nurse him back to health, even though he knows it’s going to be hard to keep Obi-Wan from guessing who he is and he’s been trying very hard to keep the teen out of this, for his own sake, at least for a little while longer, until Obi-Wan is older and more fully trained in the ways of the Force, given that not only Qui-Gon and Yoda’s High Council but apparently also the Sith have it in for him and likely wouldn’t hesitate to extend that vicious vindictiveness to Obi-Wan, too.

 **89.) Natural:** Obi-Wan slips in and out of consciousness for several days, the combination of illness and infection from his wounds causing a constant fever so high that he doesn’t even seem to realize that he’s not alone, speaking out often (if frequently also entirely incoherently or at least brokenly) in his varying states of semi-consciousness, as he drifts in and out of something like sleep and in and out of true unconsciousness, and crying out for help (calling for his Master, for Yoda, and even for Xanatos, his voice so piteous as he asks again and again for Xani that Xanatos finally can’t help himself and has to quietly tell the teen that he’s there, that it’s alright now and he’ll take care of Obi-Wan and won’t leave him until he knows that he’ll be well and safe again), his nightmares/hallucinations so bad that finally Xanatos can’t stand it any longer and breaks down and reaches out through the Force to calm him, offering soothing, comforting thoughts and a constant stream of unconditional love until finally Obi-Wan starts to settle down and, eventually, slips into a peaceful, natural sleep.

 **90.) Shape:** Xanatos has dozed off, finally, in his chair by the bed, exhausted after having spent nearly two weeks trying to nurse Obi-Wan back to health, and apparently he has no functioning danger sense around the boy, because he doesn’t wake at all when Obi-Wan turns over and half crawls up in his lap, nor does he awaken when Obi-Wan pulls him forward halfway across the bed with him, and neither does he wake completely when Obi-Wan mutters, "Roll over, Xani, you’re hogging the covers," instead surfacing just enough to go ahead and shift over until they’re spooned together comfortably under the covers (just like they used to do, when Xanatos was still a Padawan at the Temple and Obi-Wan was too frightened of his nightmares to be able to sleep alone) and only waking hours afterwards, the following morning, to find Obi-Wan propped up on an elbow and staring down at him with an expression half of wonderment and half of bleary confusion, fingertips tracing gently over Xanatos’ features, mapping them over and over again, as if trying to discern the shape of his soul . . . or trying to trace over Xanatos’ original features, where they’ve surfaced enough to perceptibly alter the shape of this body.

 **91.) Cover:** Obi-Wan doesn’t come right out and insist that Xanatos (who, to be on the safe side, simply gives his name as Moraios) is lying about who he really is or why he’s been helping Obi-Wan or how it happens to be that he _feels_ so much like Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji, in the Force – he mentions, very politely, that Moraios reminds him very much of someone he knew, once, someone with whom he always felt an inexplicably strong sense of affinity and a strange sense of belonging, someone who seemed to die under questionable circumstances, without leaving behind a body, and then he very quietly remarks that he has often felt, in the years since that man’s supposed death, as if that person were somehow still around, nearby, even, watching over him – but Xanatos can tell that the teen is essentially sure of his identity, though from the puzzled light in the back of his eyes Obi-Wan has not yet figured out how it is that it could be him; thus, though it breaks his heart to do so, when he’s completely certain that Obi-Wan is well enough again to find Qui-Gon and finish their mission so that they can go back to the Temple, he waits until after Obi-Wan has gone to sleep, and then he uses the old bond that has existed between them ever since that day so long ago, when he reached out his arms to catch a terrified boy hovering in midair, gently blurring away most of the details of the past few weeks until nothing is left but the knowledge that a young man only a few years older than Obi-Wan himself found him and helped him as much as he could for as long as he could, until finally being forced by circumstances to leave, and then withdrawing, leaving behind nothing but a brief handwritten message assuring the boy that he should feel free to make use of anything in the house he might need and that he needn’t worry about trying to find or to repay him, explaining that he’s merely returning a favor in the only way possible (knowing that Obi-Wan’s a Jedi and merely wishing to help the teenager as someone once did for him, in similar circumstances, not seeking any lauds or thanks or reward for his efforts) and prefers not to be recognized for his help, being someone who comes to Thorad often, for reasons that the general populace would most certainly not approve of, if known, and would likely try to take his life for (all but claiming that he came to rescue those in danger of being put to death for being Force-sensitive and supposedly carrying demons and leaving Obi-Wan to assume that it was because someone once did the same thing for him, to discourage him from pushing too hard to find him again, for fear of destroying his cover).

 **92.) Protect:** His people have tracked Qui-Gon down for him, while he’s been with Obi-Wan, and found him holed up among Shadan partisans, in perfectly good health and apparently far more worried about trying to negotiate his way into a meeting with their leader (to work his way up to trying to make yet another peace treaty between the Hydarian-descended peoples of the two binary worlds that, unfortunately, will almost certainly never last) than attempting to hunt up his missing Padawan, so Xanatos makes sure to be there, by way of a hidden recorder and transmitter, when Obi-Wan makes his way to the hidden base to his Master, five days after Xanatos has left him, and gets to have a bit of a laugh at the contents of Obi-Wan’s report (the teen telling Qui-Gon that he was found and taken in by a young man with dark hair and blue eyes and an angelic smile, who apparently sympathized with Force-sensitives in general and felt some kind of indebtedness to them that he wished to be able to repay, but anonymously, so that others could not hold his goodness against him, his description of Xanatos as Moraios so unabashedly bright and yet so deliberately vague that he rather gets the feeling that the teenager is deliberately attempting to protect him from notice – even Qui-Gon’s notice – even though the man should, by all rights, be extremely interested in someone responsible for saving his Padawan’s life), though he does also feel a little bit bemused over how obviously glowing Obi-Wan’s portrayal of him is, carrying a warm flushed feeling away with him to (and through and beyond) the next of his self-appointed assignments.

 **93.) Thwart:** In response to the promptings of the Force, Xanatos does a lot of work from the Inner Rim Territories on outwards, doing all that he possibly can (especially in the Mid Rim and Outer Rim Territories and areas of so-called Wild Space bordering the Outer Rim) to sniff out the work of the Sith and then do everything he possibly can to thwart those plots and schemes, including doing everything in his power to frustrate the desires of those who seem to be the Sith’s allies or tools (amongst which are most of those who seem to be taking part in the as yet nascent movement to secede from the Republic entirely and a lot of corporate guilds and trading companies and special interest groups that all seem to be doing their damnedest to undermine the smooth running of the Republic and create unrest and chaos wherever they go), in the process gaining many new allies among those he helps and a lot of dangerous enemies who’d probably thoroughly enjoy roasting him alive slowly over an open fire whilst ripping him bodily to pieces.

 **94.) Strange:** A lot of the time, he has this nagging sort of feeling that he’s still working for the Republic and the Order, in an odd sort of fashion, if in a manner that has a far more immediate impact on the beings he’s helping (and, usually, tends to truly help the people more and not simply help those who are in positions of power over the people, whether they necessarily deserve to have that kind of power or not), and it’s more than a little bit strange, to think that he’s doing at least as much and probably even more good for the sentient beings of the Republic and the galaxy now than he may’ve done in his years in the actual Order, even if the realization does give him a great deal of satisfaction, given his earlier decision to consider himself a true Jedi Bendu wrongfully cast out of an Order grown corrupt and largely unworthy of the title of Jedi.

 **95.) Unrest:** There is something happening – some larger plan or series of nestled, interlocking, intertwined schemes at play, in the fomenting unrest among the more far-flung worlds of the Republic and increasing ineffectiveness and corruption of the Republic bureaucracy – he can _sense_ it so strongly at times that almost ( _almost_!)he thinks he can see the overall shape of it, and there are days when he so despairs of the Order, for apparently utterly failing to catch on to any of it, that he wonders if it might not truly be better to allow the whole damned thing (bureaucracy and Republic and High Council and Order and Sith and all) to be destroyed, to make way for something entirely new.

 **96.) Progress:** Although there are, quite literally, not enough hours in the day for everything that needs doing, he nonetheless does his best to keep abreast of all of Obi-Wan’s advancements and accomplishments, over the years (the addition of beads and bands of color to his Padawan braid, indicating the mastery of various kinds of special disciplines and skills, are somewhat difficult to keep track of, without contacts in the Temple itself who’re capable of close contact with the young man, and so he diligently recruits allies among some of the younger Knights, who can get away with paying extra attention to such a bright young rising star due to the fact that he should so likely soon be Knighted himself and so able to work with them on missions), even though he can’t really do anything to congratulate Obi-Wan himself (though he consoles himself, at least somewhat, by arranging for small things to be done for or sent to Obi-Wan, afterwards, through untraceable channels, usually hiding behind individuals in the Alderaanian embassy – the cover there being that it will be assumed that it’s Bail or someone close to Bail who knows how very much the Crown Prince admires Obi-Wan who’s arranged for these small but gracious gestures – or an actual friend of Obi-Wan’s, like Dexter Jettster and others he’s met through Qui-Gon, to be on the safe side), trying to gauge his progress and his happiness, so he will always know if he needs to try to advance his tentative timetable for eventually revealing himself and recruiting Obi-Wan to his side, when he can no longer get away with telling himself that Obi-Wan is safer where he is and/or that it would be too dangerous to involve him in his plans.

 **97.) Danger:** He comes within a millimeter of just dropping everything to go and grab Obi-Wan, when Tahl is killed (he knows Qui-Gon well enough to predict how the man will react to such a loss and how much damage he could inflict on his apprentice, in the process); unfortunately, he’s in the middle of some very delicate negotiations with some important Senators from the Core Worlds regarding the possibility of their support for a new refugee protection act, and, by the time he actually catches up with them in their pursuit of the killer, Obi-Wan has apparently somehow (miracle upon miracles!) talked his Master down out of his killing rage and reminded Qui-Gon enough of both his status, as a Jedi, and of what Tahl would’ve likely wanted (having been a Jedi herself) that he’s basically back to normal again (enough to only want to take the criminals and their hirelings in so they can be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law rather than desiring to simply kill them all himself, slowly and in such a way that they doubtlessly will suffer greatly) and the danger’s already past . . . which on the one hand is a good(ish) thing, since it means that he still has time before he has to make the decision that will surely end up putting Obi-Wan squarely in the Sith’s line of sight, but on the other hand is somewhat awkward, too, as Obi-Wan senses him instantly and turns about and sees him before he can react quite quickly enough to hide himself, leading to a painful encounter wherein Xanatos is forced to keep all of his shields up and do his utmost to blend into the crowd and try to avoid meeting the teen’s searching, questioning, almost accusing gaze without also looking as though he’s actually actively attempting to avoid making eye contact.

 **98.) Look:** His work in attempting to prevent the seemingly ever-threatening schism from fully forming between the traditional central areas of the Galactic Republic and its outlying regions and borders takes on an increasingly political tone, the longer Xanatos is at it – simpler missions involving espionage and sabotage to keep corporations from moving in on certain areas, more forthright missions involving providing weapons, supplies, and support to those attempting to rise up against their oppressors or to defend themselves against those who would seek to take advantage, and easier missions, involving merely digging up enough dirt to relay certain information and proof to the proper authorities, so that he can then sit back and watch as the Jedi or the local police sweep in and take down those deserving of prosecution and punishment, all gradually growing fewer and farther between, as projects like the work with the Senators involving aiding refugees from the troubles become more and more the norm – and he finds himself having to step more and more carefully, to avoid the notice of certain members of the Jedi Order he would rather not have reason to take a closer look at him (at least not just yet).

 **99.) Need:** The sheer amount of corporate thievery and deprivation among the locals in the Expansion Region and the increasing amount of unrest and violence in the Mid Rim and Outer Rim Territories are so bad that the Jedi Order no longer seems able to keep abreast of all the attacks and criminal activity, and, in those instances where order (of a sorts) is reestablished enough to permit such organizations as the Refugee Relief Movement to come in and operate, even they really can’t even begin to help all of the sentient beings who need such aid: though there are several leaders among the Core Worlds who seem both to realize this and to want to help, Xanatos can’t keep from thinking that, since most of those leaders are from planets with quite sizable populations (and so won’t be able to allow the relocation of refugees to those worlds) and since the prevalence of Mid Rim worlds among those planets both willing to help and able to allow such relocations unfortunately means that they aren’t necessarily going to be getting the refugees to locations that are all that much safer, what they really need to do is to recruit some of the Inner Rim worlds with room enough to absorb some fairly sizable additions to their populations and to figure out a way to convince the Senate to stop tying the hands of the Jedi, when it comes to the corporations, and therefore allow the Jedi to do far more to combat the often blatantly illegal activities and rapacity of the corporations in the Expansion Region, before all of those worlds can be rendered just as (if not more) used up and polluted and unlivable as Telos IV is well on the way to becoming.

 **100.) Private:** There’s what essentially amounts to a private enclave of Jedi who abide by pre-Ruusan Reformations rules on Emet, now, run by Ila and Xanatos’ sister (in Xanatos’ absence), and he finds it incredibly telling that the so-called wise Jedi Order can’t even seem to _sense_ the enclave’s existence, much less do anything to try to curtail or control it.

 **101.) Ghost:** He knows that Obi-Wan is on Alderaan, but as far as he’s aware the young man is supposed to be a visitor at the Royal Palace, as a guest of the Crown Prince, recuperating after a particularly nasty mission (one where Xanatos was forced to send agents to intervene in the unfolding of certain events, to keep things from getting even uglier), and so he nearly perishes of shock when he turns about one day in the artisans’ marketplace below the Jedi chapterhouse on the Maeramund River, outside of Aldera, to find the Padawan staring at him intently, eyes wide and face pale as though he’s seen a ghost.

 **102.) Glamour:** His first instinct (that he should hide by throwing an elaborate glamour up over himself and then make a quick run for it before Obi-Wan can manage to track him down) is ruined when his companion – an aged semi-retired Jedi Master by the name of Kylea Santeri, who divides her time between watching over the younglings in the chapterhouse and working with the local artisans – calls out to Bail and Qui-Gon to come and say hello, the two of them obliging by coming up behind Obi-Wan from further back across the open square to sweep him along with them, ushering him along and forcing Xanatos to quickly improvise a plan that will hopefully allow him to retreat rapidly, before Obi-Wan can convince himself to accuse Xanatos of being who he is and (given how many allies he has on this world and based on ties to this world) before anyone can sense anything at all off about him.

 **103.) Familiar:** He’s met Bail several times before and therefore is used to both being gazed at by the man as though Bail were desperately trying to figure out why he seems so naggingly familiar and being in possession of what amounts to an airtight alibi, in that the Crown Prince and his people know him by the name borne by this body and, having always known him as Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis and having worked with him on a couple of projects, have no real cause to suspect he’s anyone or anything other than what he appears to be, which (thankfully!) is apparently good enough for Qui-Gon, who politely shakes hands and exchanges a bit of small talk but otherwise doesn’t even look at him twice (aside from raising an eyebrow slightly and smiling faintly at the way Bail lingers over shaking his hand, as though silently remarking to himself on the Crown Prince’s good taste, given his obvious interest); Obi-Wan, though, stares at him and _stares_ at him and, when he shakes his hand, holds on to it as though the extra physical tactile contact can somehow make it clear to Obi-Wan why he feels as if he knows him, automatically probing at the edges of his shields with the Force (inquisitive, desperately seeking tendrils of thought, trying to get closer, to get at the core of him, the truth of him, to reach out and find the bond that a part of him must somehow still subconsciously know is there, linking them together), and it kills him, both to have to keep his shields slammed so tightly closed that essentially nothing of himself can leak through and to have to noncommittally reply to the teen’s somewhat shaky remark that he seems incredibly familiar that there’s just something in the arrangement of his features that often seems to cause such a sense of false familiarity in individuals who have done a great deal of travel and so seen numerous different people, even as he gently rotates his wrist to disengage his hand from Obi-Wan’s increasingly possessive grip.

 **104.) Proud:** He shamelessly distracts Obi-Wan by remarking on the number of decorations in his Padawan’s braid, pretending some knowledge of the meanings of the variously colored bands and crystal beads from his many visits to Alderaanian chapterhouse and prompting a long and surprisingly proud-sounding commentary from Qui-Gon on Obi-Wan’s many achievements and talents that so flusters and embarrasses the teenager (especially when Bail chimes in, speaking glowingly of Obi-Wan’s performance on the diplomatic missions he’s been privileged to also take part in) that he’s far too busy flushing and trying to deflect or at least tone down the praise to really do more than keep giving Xanatos that searching look.

 **105.) Note:** A simple handwritten note is somehow waiting for him, back in his suite, in the chapterhouse’s guesting lodges, the _sense_ and _feel_ and physical scent of Obi-Wan clinging to it so strongly that it almost seems to glow with the same aura of blindingly pure white _light_ that surrounds the boy, and, reaching out to it with trembling fingers and the breath caught painfully in the back of his throat, he skims reverent fingertips across the elegant script that spells this body’s name, and, opening the precisely folded over in half piece of old-fashioned heavy parchment paper, knows that he must leave immediately, before he can do anything foolish, and never return to a world where he even suspects Obi-Wan may be, unless he plans to tell him the full truth, when he reads the message that is waiting for him: _I thank you for my life, Sir, whatever your true name may be. If ever you should be in need of anything, you may call upon me for aid and I will give it gladly. This I, Obi-Wan Kenobi, swear, with the Force as my witness._

 **106.) Fortune:** He does keep track of his firstborn, Ousire, over the years, at least enough to make sure that the boy is safe and in no need of anything major – he’s always sent the boy’s mother a very generous monthly stipend, to see to it that they can both live quite comfortably, irregardless of whether Latura even works at all, and that does not change with his supposed death, even though he suspects that Latura is, at the very least, a liar, and may, at worst, be an agent of someone associated in some way with the Sith, either as an ally or tool of some sort: he knows his duty, as the boy’s father, and sees to it scrupulously, even though the boy will also be inheriting an immense fortune, when he reaches his majority, and should never be in need for funds ever again, afterwards, given that he’s essentially going to end up the head of Offworld Corporations and all of the wealth it’s accumulated, over the years, that Xanatos did not use for his own ends, previous to the vacating of his original body, due to an arrangement that Xanatos saw to both because it would seem to confirm his death in the eyes of the High Council and because it would draw attention away from Telos and, by extension, Emet and the home of his true family and his pupils in the Force, since the inheritance would be delivered to someone so far away – and, thus, when some noticeable irregularities show up in the reports he’s receiving on his son’s education, is not too terribly surprised when it eventually becomes clear that the woman isn’t what she originally seemed to be and has apparently been raising the boy solely so that he will be fit to be used as a tool against the Jedi Order, though he is vaguely disappointed in himself for not suspecting her enough to follow through on those suspicions much earlier, given how oddly (determinedly even, one might say) empty-headed and single-minded in her romantic devotion to him she’d seemed, to the point where he’d deliberately limited his time with her, just to avoid having to subject himself overly much to her apparent vacuousness.

 **107.) Deceit:** When he finally becomes both concerned enough and in possession of sufficient time to have his best agents look into Latura, they uncover a trail of deceit leading back to the Senator of Eeropha and beyond, to an area of space around Qalydon, very near to the ancient area of Sith strongholds once known (on pre-Ruusan maps of the Republic and the surrounding known galaxy) as Sith Space, and it is then, when he realizes that the Sith may very well be involved, that he knows he’s going to have no choice but to have the blasted woman permanently removed so that he can seize the boy, if he wants to avoid having his eldest son raised to be nothing more than a tool not just of vengeance but of vindictive, destructive Darkness.

 **108.) Neglect:** Somehow, the witch and her accomplices have managed to hide the fact that the boy not only is no longer living in her home, on Neirport VII, but that she apparently hasn’t been using the stipend Xanatos has been sending to her for so many years for them to live on, the lying, conniving slag apparently turning over the money to Senator Sano Sauro (with some of those funds apparently being diverted to Senator Bog Divinian of Nuralee) instead of using it towards the general upkeep and safety and well-being of their boy, and his fury is such, on learning of her deceptions and her willful neglect of their child, that he simply goes to her and kills her, himself, with no hesitation or remorse or questions asked (other than the ones he puts to her, in an attempt to get her to account for herself).

 **109.) Protection:** It’s far worse than he expected or even feared: Latura is an agent of the Sith Master himself, chosen on behalf of his political face (the façade he uses, the false identity behind which he hides his true nature) to be sent to Senator Sauro expressly for use in the Senator’s schemes to not only attempt to turn the opinion of the galaxy against the Jedi, but to also try to cultivate Force-sensitive personal allies (strong enough to have been Jedi but either not discovered and raised by the Jedi or else rejected by them), possibly for later use as assassins or fighter pilots or bodyguards if not some combination of all three, perhaps even as the core seed of an eventually unstoppable fighting force even the Jedi would be unprepared for and so unable to combat, supposedly as a sign of support for such schemes but in reality apparently more because the Sith simply desired to see if the man could, with Latura’s help, secure any Dark Jedi who might successfully be used as allies, tools, or destructive distractions to keep the Order from noticing the Sith . . . said plan evidently having altered first when the Sith became aware of Latura’s involvement with Xanatos (the Dark Lord evidently having some kind of personal interest in him), next when it became clear that, while he’d attempted to design their boy to be insensate to the Force, the child had instead been born with the unique gift of being able to unconsciously use the Force to make others insensate to him, and thirdly when Xanatos supposedly died (a supposition that the Sith evidently bought, Latura’s shock over his claim and subsequent proof of identity entirely real . . . as was her absolute satisfaction and gloating, over her enjoyment of the thought of what her Master would do to Xanatos, to get that secret of mind/soul transference out of him, since such a trick could conceivably be used to allow one to live forever, simply by changing bodies as they wore out or became damaged) and so was assumed to be unable to interfere with a more direct approach for both turning the boy against the Jedi and putting him in a position where he’d not only be a useful tool/ally of the Sith but could also be studied for his peculiar talent, as well, meaning that, while the Sith has apparently not yet connected Xanatos’ actions since the switch over to this new body and his growing network of contacts and allies with his former life or his true family (which in turn, thankfully, means that his family is likely to be and to remain safe from the notice of the Sith, since he has been very careful to keep them as separate as possible and hidden away from association to or contact with his new life and Sith are not overly equipped either to understand the bonds of family or to even think of family if it is not overtly brought to their attention), the Sith Lord is also extremely likely to want to capture him alive, if/when he twigs to the fact that Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis is actually Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji, meaning that Xanatos is going to have to undergo the rather time-consuming and draining (and somewhat painful) procedure of instigating the process by which he can provide himself and his knowledge/memories with the ultimate form of protection, by making it so that anyone who tries to gain access to them against his volition will immediately destroy them all.

 **110.) Technique:** The technique is one that he discovered in records from the last major Jedi vs. Sith conflict, the Light and Darkness War (or so-called New Sith Wars), evidently developed to keep the enemy from casually mind-raping captured opponents and seizing sensitive information about troop and supply movements, weapons and other assets, passwords to protected bases, and so on, and, while effectively able to shield such sensitive information through the creation of an elaborate series of intricate interlocking layers of mental shields and booby traps and fail-safes and redundant triggers, all tied in to a firmly impressed, unbreakable order that instantaneously forces a complete, irreversible, unalterable, irretrievable wipe of all the information protected by those shields and traps, unfortunately also requires so much time and effort to set up – and, supposedly, such a degree of mind skill and self-knowledge required for one to perform it on oneself that very few below the level of a Master capable of serving on the High Council can successfully perform it with anything like relative ease – and results in an amnesiac state so close to full mental regression to childhood (especially if the traps and commands are set up by another individual) that the technique was never widely used or published and so was essentially forgotten, after Ruusan, and, while he can, with his knowledge of how to perform a transference of mind, take extra precautions to protect the contents of his mind from the results of any attempt to attack or to outright seize the contents of his mind, he really dislikes the thought of having to resort to such a drastic measure to protect himself, even from the Sith Lord.

 **111.) Rescue:** In all honesty, the boy, Ousire, doesn’t necessarily mean all that much to him – Xanatos doesn’t know the child: how could he mean much of anything to him when he knows next to nothing of him? – but he’s his child and he doesn’t deserve to be the testing subject of a Sith Lord (no one deserves that . . . well, no one, perhaps, except maybe for Qui-Gon or Yoda, who he suspects more and more has deliberately been sabotaging or attempting to sabotage or at least curtail the careers of certain potential Jedi – including Xanatos himself and Obi-Wan Kenobi – for his own private reasons and/or amusement), and so he must at least attempt to rescue him, if he wants to be able to live with himself, even if it is extremely likely that measures will have been taken to ensure that the boy cannot be easily gotten to or moved.

 **112.) Emphasis:** The All Sciences Research Academy at Yerphonia seriously strikes him as primarily being a breeding ground for mad scientists – there is a preponderance of emphasis on work that could easily be turned to enormously destructive ends and really no emphasis at all on morality or personal responsibility – and Xanatos has an extremely bad feeling about the place as soon as he’s close enough to see it, especially given that apparently that Force-experimenting crazy witch Jenna Zan Arbor has ties to the place, which (given the kind of facility this so manifestly is and given its ties both to allies of the Sith Lord and to various of their schemes) strongly makes him suspect that she may very well have been either recruited by the Sith or else that the Sith may have at one point deliberately maneuvered her about into a position where she could be used as a suitable tool against the Jedi and the Republic and could very well be planning to facilitate her eventual escape from prison in order to continue to use her.

 **113.) Bad Idea:** It’s a bad idea for him to be there and he knows it as soon as he gets there; he can’t just give up on his firstborn, though, so . . . after considering the possibilities, he decides that the best, safest course to take will be to make a recording with all the pertinent information, saved to a device keyed in such a way that it will only respond to the DNA signature of his child, and offering at the end to set up a meeting at a safe extraction point so that he can go ahead and get himself and his boy the hell out of there, before the creeping, sinking sensation of imminent danger can catch up with him enough to drive him away.

 **114.) Trick:** When the boy shows at the designated extraction point, he is foolish enough to think that he’s avoided the danger and that things will be alright, now; unfortunately, he’s fatally misjudged the amount of manipulation the boy’s already suffered and apparently been kept ignorant of at least one meeting between his child and the Sith Lord, for no sooner has the boy embraced him than a poisoned knife has also been slipped between his ribs and a device he recognizes from his readings as a trap for the wandering psyches of Force-sensitives has been clamped tight to his forehead, the maniacal glitter of his boy’s glazed blue eyes the last thing he sees before he’s swallowed by darkness, the hissed words, "I do not believe you! This is a trick! You are not my father! Filthy Jedi, die!" echoing in his ears as he plummets down into darkness.

 **115.) Prize:** Things are very quiet and very dark for what seems like a very long time, and Xanatos is making circuits of the damned prison he’s trapped in, trying to figure out if there are any flaws or weaknesses in the pattern of interlocking wards and seals and shields that continue, nestled inside one another, all the way down to the molecular level (or perhaps, failing that, to find a way to force himself between the subatomic cracks and gaps that he intellectually knows must riddle the trap, beneath all the commands binding the whole thing together around him), waiting to be presented to the Sith Lord like a prize of battle, when it finally occurs to him that so much time has passed that his boy can’t have been in possession of a means to pass him off to the Sith . . . and, even better, that he can still sense (if only dimly) all those with whom he’s had functional bonds of one sort or another, in life, including Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 **116.) Visualize:** If he’s careful to visualize the gaps in the trap that he knows, logically, have to be there at the subatomic level, beneath all the bindings so carefully and securely holding his prison together, Xanatos can access the Force almost just as if he were still free (except for the whole not being able to completely physically move out of the prison holding him, of course, his ability to do so seemingly limited by the fact that apparently theoretical knowledge is not the same as physically tactile exploitable weaknesses), as long as he concentrates mightily, and it is through this method that he is able first to contact his family and let them know what happened to him – contacting his unofficial Padawans through their training bonds and instructing Ila and his sister to be sure to continue training the little ones and the young ones, so that they’ll be able to properly protect themselves, should anything happen to make the Sith Master find them – and eventually also to figure out a way to eavesdrop on Obi-Wan through that old bond of theirs that never completely broke (not when Qui-Gon tried to rip Obi-Wan’s Force-sensitivity out or Xanatos’ original body perished and certainly not when Xanatos’ brainwashed firstborn murdered his replacement body), so that he can continue to keep watch over Obi-Wan, even while trapped.

 **117.) Sway:** Xanatos is there with Obi-Wan through many of his missions, and so he’s able to recognize the particular hallmarks of a Sith in the circumstances surrounding the apparent death of the Weapon’s Master whilst searching for his lost Padawan; thus, for one of the first times, he exerts himself to try to sway the young man’s course, urging Obi-Wan to spend less time trying to get anything out of the residents of the underlevels and to make more haste in the pursuit of the faint sense of Darsha Assant, in the Force, so that perhaps he might (if he’s very, very lucky) be able to find her before the Sith (the apprentice, he suspects. The whole things feels much too public, for the Master to be the one at work in Coruscant’s undercity) can finish the girl off, too.

 **118.) Witness:** He’s just as shocked as anyone cognizant of what an impossibility it is would have been, to witness Obi-Wan somehow managing to effortlessly carry a spirit whose body renders her all but blind, deaf, and dumb even to proof of the existence (much less the specific movements of the various currents of energy) of the Force with him so deeply within its tides that she all but comes face to face with the watching in dumbly stunned shock Xanatos, Xanatos managing to react only when it eventually becomes clear that she’s going to lose herself in the Force’s deeps if someone doesn’t stop her from blindly reaching out and yearning after the beckoning brightness of its powerful flows, the _feel_ of the young lady so extraordinary (her spirit marked by something oddly very like the kind of bond that he’s noticed will sometimes spontaneously spring into existence, both with family members strong in the Force where one is enough older – or sufficiently more responsible – than the other to feel enough of a sense of obligation/duty to the other to want to be able to keep track of that one constantly, and with Force-sensitive lovers raised outside of the strictures of the Jedi Order) that he finds himself lingering with her a time, long enough to follow her back to the source of that strange bond . . . where he meets a young woman who answers to the name of Sabé Dahn, and receives one of the greatest shocks of his life.

 **119.) Other:** It’s not just that the young woman’s mind has so many different links that feel like some sort of training bonds (apparently tying her to a majority of the handmaidens and handmaid trainees of the Queen of Naboo, who is none other than the remarkable young woman Obi-Wan carried down within the Force with him) that it’s nearly as though he’s run up against a network of ties almost like some kind of latent battle meld: no, beneath her conscious mind, lurking in the depths where there will generally be nothing but old, subconscious memories and unconscious, unrealized desires, is what appears to be a completely different mind, with a whole other set of memories having nothing whatsoever to do with the girl’s life or indeed any other person’s life in recent living memory, what little he glimpses before being violently repulsed by a set of shields so subtle that he hadn’t even been able to _sense_ them, until after he’d already been thrown out, revolving around a period of time so distant that the larger galaxy apparently hadn’t even heard of the Sith just yet, the memories so clear and precise and seemingly _real_ that he can tell that they are true memories and not simply knowledge gleaned from old holorecordings and/or other old documents, shocking him so badly with not just the sheer fact of the second mind’s existence but the vividness of the thoughts and images that he partakes of before being unceremoniously thrown out that he has to try half a dozen times to get past those shields again and see more before he’s finally forced to give it up as a bad job.

 **120.) Pull:** He _senses_ the boy through Obi-Wan like a tidal pull, even through the haze of pain clouding the young man’s senses (and Force, but he’s rarely felt so frightened in all his life, as when those droids all converged on Obi-Wan at once while he was trying to provide cover for a group of some kind of obviously sentient, swiftly retreating amphibious beings – later proven to be Gungans – and he saw that Obi-Wan was going down into the water and his lightsaber would surely short out, his panic such that the only help he could think to try to give, through the Force, was the idea of throwing out of a wave of the Force strong enough to send the machines all tumbling out into the swampy waters themselves, breaking some of them against nearby trees and shorting a few of the others out in the water but not saving Obi-Wan entirely from their advance or their barrage of weapons’ fire), from the only mostly caught and properly safely converted energy of the blaster hits he took, recognizes at once the _feel_ of one meant to form a bond with Obi-Wan as an apprentice to a Master, and rails so bitterly against Qui-Gon’s attempts to interfere and take the child on for himself (as if he has not already done enough harm, stealing two apprentices clearly meant for others!) that, afterwards, he fears that his bad mood and anger may have seeped out slightly along the bond and inadvertently made matters somewhat worse, by influencing Obi-Wan’s attitude and actions during the mission.

 **121.) Torn:** Xanatos is torn between wanting to rejoice and wanting to cram Qui-Gon’s spirit right back into his body and order him to damn well make things _right_ again, after the Sith warrior deals him a fatal blow; he knows, though, from the tenor of Obi-Wan’s all but overwhelming anguish and self-blame, that he’s going to have to wait before he can give free vent to either his anger or his joyous relief, any reaction he might have so likely to effect Obi-Wan’s fragile state of mind badly that he hardly dares to allow himself to do more than to simply be there and think strong, encouraging, calming thoughts until after he can tell that Obi-Wan is determined to finalize the bond with Anakin and will refrain from trying to do anything foolish, if only for the sake of the boy.

 **122.) Synchronicity:** Obi-Wan and Anakin exist in an odd state of synchronicity, their psyches in such perfect balance that it is literally impossible for him to touch the bond with Obi-Wan without also being flooded with the _sense_ of Anakin, and he learns a surprising amount about the young boy from Tatooine in a very short amount of time, simply from eavesdropping on him through his new young Master . . . so much that he heartily approves, when Obi-Wan arrives at a scheme to shelter the boy from the fearful attentions of the High Council Masters (especially the extremely disapproving Yoda) by making sure that Anakin always seems less than he is, hoping that Obi-Wan’s understanding of the need to resort to such an extreme in his Padawan’s name will soon lead to a greater comprehension of the flaws riddling the Order and convince him of the need to eventually do something about it.

 **123.) Zealot:** He watches over Obi-Wan and Anakin for nearly six years before things begin to fall apart, his firstborn having grown under the tutelage of Senator Sauro and his ilk into a fanatical zealot full of nothing but anger and hate, Ousire’s alliance with Jenna Zan Arbor so firm that Xanatos has, apparently, been made a grandfather, and so must also worry about trying to save/redeem those children, too.

 **124.) Sense:** He can’t decide if it makes more sense for Ousire to have been damaged, somehow, by his long association with individuals close to the Sith (most likely including the Sith Master himself, though his son may not realize or even have been allowed to understand that) and beings like Jenna Zan Arbor (who unnerves him in a way that very few other individuals ever have managed to do before, making him give thanks to the Force with every iota of his being that she was not born Force-sensitive and is apparently just a little bit too sane to try to experiment on herself to make herself more sensitive to the Force’s flows, either of which thing would have and could still spell absolute unmitigated disaster for the galaxy – worse even, he suspects, than what the Sith Lord has in store, at least in the long run – if she should ever slip enough to start experimenting on herself) – who have likely been able to do the Force alone only knows what to his poor misguided boy – or if it makes more sense for the boy’s mother to have perhaps had some kind of serious mental and emotional imbalance that was somehow kept hidden from Xanatos, in order to account for Ousire’s often bizarre and maniacal mood swings and his belief that he’s doing the right thing and that nothing he does, no matter how horrible, can be held against him, because his actions are all motivated by the Jedi’s "murder" of his father; either way, though, Xanatos rather suspects that the boy is simply beyond saving, at this point, and that the best he’ll be able to hope for, for him, will be a clean and relatively swift death.

 **125.) Numb:** The girl’s death in regrettable – he knows that Anakin and Obi-Wan are both going to end up mourning Darra Thel-Tanis for quite some time to come – but frankly he’s too relieved that no one else has been killed or seriously injured to even really be able to hold it against the one Padawan who’s at least partially to blame for it (Ferus Olin, a boy Obi-Wan apparently at once feels a great sense of responsibility for and an enormous sense of disappointment in, for reasons Xanatos really only partially follows, the boy’s bad reaction to Obi-Wan’s bonding with Anakin being somewhat more understandable, in Xanatos’ opinion, than Obi-Wan seems to want to believe), and, by the time it’s all over with, he’s really too tired and numb for the fact that his firstborn has essentially just committed suicide by Jedi – forcing Obi-Wan to strike him down in order to protect himself and his Padawan, rather than permit himself to be captured (with no fallback plan to let him work around the fact that his body’s perished, as Xanatos possessed when he did something similar) – to really sink in all the way.

 **126.) Time:** He knows he’s going to have very little time – the Sith Master will claim everything of Ousire’s, now that his son is dead, and that means that Xanatos’ prison is about to become the Sith’s property, after all – so he does his best to say his farewells, making his sister and Ila and the children all promise that they won’t do anything foolish to try to rescue him and that they will remain true to what they’ve learned and willingly support Obi-Wan in any and every way possible, should he ever be in a position to change the Order as it so desperately needs to be changed, and then he settles down and waits for the inevitable pain.

 **127.) Idiot:** He feels like the galaxy’s biggest idiot, for not at least _suspecting_ the man, when he finally finds out who the Sith Lord is; yet, in the next moment, he also feels incredibly smart, for the first thing Sidious tries to do is to get into his mind, spitting and snarling and threatening to force Xanatos into a new body just so he can rip him limb from limb from limb, for daring to ward his mind in such a manner, alternating between incoherent ravings and extremely bloody threats, so angry that it’s almost worth it, being there, just to know that he’s made the monster so thoroughly enraged and that there is nothing the Sith Lord can actually do about what Xanatos has done to ward his secrets.

 **128.) Existence:** Laughing at Sidious from behind his protective shields swiftly becomes one of the few real pleasures he has left, in his existence, and so he indulges it whenever possible, even though the Sith Master loses no time in finding ways of causing him distress and so generally makes him pay dearly for his pleasure.

 **129.) Prison:** In the end, Sidious’ prison is both far worse and yet also in some small ways better than that of Ousire’s: he can get nothing more than the very faintest of senses of those on the other end of his myriad bonds (even Obi-Wan is as little more than a distant star in the night sky, sometimes shining with fiercely bright abandon but sometimes dimmed by clouds and/or hidden away by storm) and cannot of his own power or volition reach out to anyone else, the prison is so meticulously crafted and sealed and bound about with pain-inducing wards that cannot be won through, no matter how one might be willing to suffer for it, which is vexing and frustrating to the point of madness, almost, given that Sidious for his own evil pleasure generally deliberately rigs the prison to cause him to re-experience the very worst of all the horrors and mistakes and nightmares and failures and regrets that can be dredged up out of his trapped subconscious and the lack of escape makes tolerating the suffering much harder than it would otherwise be; yet, in his arrogance, Sidious forgot to ward the prison against those seeking to reach out to him from the outside, and, eventually, the presence of one or another of the experimental children the Sith and his pet mad scientists have been so busily creating acts as such a source of comfort and strength and steadiness that he is quite sure that he never would’ve made it, without them.

 **130.) Escape:** He recognizes Bail the instant that the Alderaanian makes contact with the cause of his imprisonment and, by touching it, shatters the seals binding Xanatos, and that is the only thing that keeps Xanatos from trying to lash out reflexively in desperation, to once more try to escape, thinking that Sidious has let him part of the way out again either to torment him some more or else to try to have yet another go at breaking him or seducing him into giving up and willingly sharing what he knows with the Sith Master, and that, in turn, is the only thing that saves Bail’s life . . . though his shock, at seeing the man in Jedi robes (after he’s fled along the promise of the nearest path of safety, according to the Force, and found himself being temporarily carried within Obi-Wan, his consciousness, his soul, nestled right up against Obi-Wan’s, like two seeds in a pod), might possibly have been enough to save him, in and of itself.

 

 

 

 

 

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 _ **Botheration!** _ Folks, I'm _sorry_ , but I ran out of room in the various "notes" sections for all of the notes that I feel like I really _ought_ to put on this story. I hope it's not against the rules to do this, because I'm honestly not sure what else to do here. I'm just going to put the notes that I couldn't get to fit elsewhere down here, alright?

 

 

 **Author’s Notes Continued: 1** **.)** The system of Emet and its three separate habitable worlds, including the binary worlds of Alawwal and Alakhir and the solitary world of Ninhursag (considered sacred by the Emetarians and so largely untouched, but for vast cultivated gardens and magnificent monuments and temples – usually with small staffs of devotees – dedicated to the concept of the universal light and ever spreading spark of life, a power of creation and goodness and love that the Emetarians hold as being somewhat synonymous with the concept of the Force) are of my own creation, though based on the EU established neighboring/nearby planet (never named and never specifically set in the Telos system, which as far as I know is not reported in the EU or canon to have more than the single world – Telos IV – capable of supporting human and humanoid life) that Telosian Governor Crion allegedly wished to annex for its precious minerals and valuable factories, after decades (if not centuries) of apparently peaceful coexisting and mutually prosperous trade, as governed by a treaty of alliance, the terms of which were, if not challenged, automatically extended every ten years. I’ve deliberately chosen to make this conflict more personal and less influenced by simple greed and lust for power mainly due to the fact that the EU makes it sound as if the treaty between Telos IV and this nearby neighbor had been in place for centuries rather than decades and frankly I find it difficult to the point of impossible to believe that a majority of a peaceful and civilized group of beings like the Telosians would seem ready to blindly follow Crion into a conflict with said neighbors (civil war, note, only breaking out on Telos IV in the EU _after_ Qui-Gon Jinn arrived on the planet with Xanatos to attempt to monitor the challenge to the treaty, when Qui-Gon declared to the populace at large that Crion’s sole goal and impetus was the expansion of his own wealth and power base, even if he had to steal from the Telosians’ neighbors in order to fulfill that desire) without some kind of better, more emotionally grounded motivation. Having the recently declared formally titled Great Sacred High Royal House of Labara – the treacherous usurpers of the throne of the whole Emet system – attempt to extend its domain over Telos IV and the whole of the Telos system by attempting to kill off the Governor of Telos IV and his family as well as the heads and heirs apparent of several other politically active and highly influential/powerful/wealthy clans prior to Crion’s cry to reevaluate the treaty seemed a fairly logical explanation, to me, with eventual outbreak of fighting on Telos being due mainly to Qui-Gon’s well-intended but deadly meddling, guided as he was in this particular case by ignorance, impatience, and an absolute inability to comprehend the traditional Telosian code of honor, all of which resulted in an instance of gross incompetence complicated by even grosser negligence (some might even say outright abuse) towards his young Telosian apprentice. **2 **.)**** As far as I know, the idea that, in a more perfect ’verse, Dooku would have been Xanatos’ Master while Qui-Gon Jinn would’ve been Bail Organa’s Master and Xanatos’ would’ve then been Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Master (after which Obi-Wan would’ve been Anakin Skywalker’s Master), is wholly original to myself, as is the notion that, in a truly perfect ’verse, after Qui-Gon was Knighted, he and Dooku would, as a bonded couple, have apprenticed Bail and Xanatos as a bonded couple to be, after which Xanatos and Bail would have then apprenticed Chiss brothers Mitth’ras’safis and Mitth’raw’nuruodo, with some occasional input from their former Masters, who, meanwhile, would’ve shared responsibility for apprenticing Obi-Wan Kenobi, who would’ve eventually gone on to be Anakin’s Master, though I’ve certainly kicked around some the particulars of both of these notions with a few individuals, including my lovely idea beta LJ user **fancyspinner** , to make sure I understood precisely how such Master-Padawan pairings would work out (trust me, it works. The groupings of years are oddly perfect to allow for the various apprenticeships). **3.)** Most of the names I’ve created for this piece (for individuals, planets, and peoples) are either symbolically significant (kudos to readers who know what some of them mean and/or refer to!) or, as in the case of part of the surname of Xanatos’ family, meant to function as tributes of sorts to some of my sources of inspiration. ("Adi" means jewel while "Ai" means love, accounting for the rest of the surname.) The very first story I read that featured Xanatos as a character was a novel-length piece (I believe by the name of _Prodigal_ or _Prodigals_ or something very like that, though I cannot completely swear to that. I think I found it on the _**Master-Apprentice** _ site, though again, I cannot swear to it, since I did not see it there when I went to look it up again, searching by the main couple I can recall from the story, and I couldn't and cannot recall the name of the author) in which the Telosian’s last name was given as Aji, and, though not the kind of story I usually go out of my way to read (the story is technically Mpreg, which the author rationalizes with the not exactly human norm near-human physiology of one of the male leads), it was so brilliantly written and engaging that I found myself enjoying it immensely and becoming both hugely curious about this apparent former Padawan of Qui-Gon Jinn and intrigued by the possibilities of having near-humans in the GFFA, some of whom might seem to be male but actually be able to carry children (without having it result in their deaths, as unfortunately eventually happens in this particular story). (By the way, if  _anyone_ is familiar with that story, by the way, I would _dearly_ appreciate a note with the author's name and the story title, so I can add them here in my notes properly!) Also, in addition to being the Japanese symbol for "beloved child," in a series of interlocking trilogies set in the **_Foreigner_ ** universe by an excellent published author by the name of C. J. Cherryh, "aiji" (rough translation: "firstmost" or "headmost") is the title for the leader or lord of the _aishidi’tat_ or central association of the _atevi_. Given that I’ve always thought that there’s an element of the samurai in the _atevi_ and that the traditional Telosian code of honor is primarily based on my knowledge of various warrior codes and honor codes, including that of the samurai or Bushidō, chivalric knighthood (knightly virtues, etc.), the Nine Noble Virtues of Germanic folklore, the Kshatriya code of Dharma, xiá (the code of the Yóuxiá or wandering knights-errant of China), concepts of _honour_ and _dignitas_ , and the stated/claimed (if not often precisely realized) philosophy behind the Jedi Order and its Knights and Masters, I thought that this would be particularly appropriate for a part of the surname of Xanatos’ family, especially since the Telosian Guild of Lawful Codes and Conduct occasionally can, in cases where vendetta have been legally approved, function in a way similar to that of the _atevi_ Guild of Assassins. **4.)** I did **_not_ ** create the superstitious belief that multiples (such as twins) commit incest in the womb: in traditional Mohave culture, for example, opposite-sex twins were thought to have been married in heaven; and, in traditional Balinese culture, a set of twins of the opposite sex would either be forced to marry or else put to death, since it was assumed they’d had sex in utero; etc.

 

 

　

**Author's Note:**

>  **Clarification Notes: 1.)** Readers should **_please_** note that the details of Xanatos’ backstory as regards to his parents and his reasons for having a child are roughly half original, as the creator of this particular EU character (Jude Watson) never bothered to flesh him out sufficiently to even give him a proper surname. Readers should also please note that I take a very different view of Xanatos’ relationship with his former Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, and of Qui-Gon’s abandonment of Xanatos on Telos IV than that taken in the EU by Xanatos’ creator, Jude Watson. In my opinion, the very fact that the EU writer fails to understand that Qui-Gon had no gorram business whatsoever killing Xanatos’ father in front of him and then leaving the traumatized young man behind on Telos IV, just because he did not keep his emotional control in the wake of said up close and personally witnessed murder, proves that she is entirely too biased (and wholly unable of writing or understanding realistic human relationships and emotions) to be trying to write about Jedi in the first frakkin’ place. **2.)** Readers need to be aware of the fact that, though Obi-Wan Kenobi is reported in canon and EU to have been born in 57 BBY (or 965 After Ruusan Reformations), in my ’verse he was actually born in that gray area on the galactic standard calender where, by some standards, he would’ve been born at the very end of 57 BBY (965 ARR), and, by others, at the very beginning of 56 BBY (or 966 ARR). His age has been misjudged slightly all of his life due to the fact that, as a child of Coruscant, the Order is unaware not only of his exact date of birth but also his precise ancestry. Obi-Wan is barely five when he falls into a coma for roughly thirteen months, pretty much on the heels of Qui-Gon Jinn’s abandonment of Xanatos, meaning that, since Xanatos was born in roughly 71 BBY (951 ARR), Xani would’ve barely been twenty at his time of abandonment. To reflect this accurately, some slight alteration must be given to dates in the EU for the birth of Granta Omega and the death of Crion, with the first happening not quite halfway through 53 BBY (or 969 ARR), not 55 BBY (a date that, in my opinion, would make Xanatos a little too young, at about fifteen years of age, to have plausibly arranged to secretly father a child), and the second occurring in the first half of 51 BBY (or 971 ARR), not 53 BBY (a date that I believe is a little too early, anyway, since Xanatos would only be eighteen, then, even though he’s supposed to have been ready for his Trials of Knighthood when sent back to Telos IV with Qui-Gon). Frankly, I don’t think that the EU writer in question (Jude Watson) was paying close enough attention to when she was placing the major events in Xanatos’ life, considering when he’s supposed to have been born and when Obi-Wan’s supposed to have been born and when most human/near-human Padawans are usually Knighted, even without my decision to let Xanatos remain in the Temple long enough to have established a firm relationship with Obi-Wan. If it will make readers feel better, consider the fact that most dates in the EU prior to the end of the Clone Wars are considered somewhat questionable, due to the fact that so many records were destroyed by Palpatine to strengthen his position and allow him to rule as he wished, as Emperor, and that it’s entirely possible that the dates of Granta Omega’s birth and Crion’s death are, like the birth of Xanatos himself, at least slightly conjectural, having been pieced together from records fragmentary at best. **3.)** To avoid any confusion over what is and isn’t canon or EU, readers should keep in mind that most of the planets (and peoples) mentioned in this piece (aside from Telos IV, Coruscant, Serenno, Corellia, Eriadu, Tatooine, Eeropha, Nierport and Nierport VII, Yerphonia, Kimanan and the Orus Sector in the Inner Rim, Melida/Daan, Qalydon, and the Senex-Juvex Sector, as well as the Hapans, the Kiffar, and the very arrogant, prone to genetic tampering Arkanians) are essentially of my own creation, to help fill in some of the various background details! Readers should also be aware that I made the Sector that Eeropha and Nierport (including its moons, like Nierport VII) are located in known as the Eeropha Sector, even though it’s not specified as such in the EU (that I recall), because the EU doesn’t actually give any specific name for that Sector. (The EU is rather bad about not specifying details like that, unfortunately!) Also, as far as I’m concerned, even though I don’t believe the EU ever bothers to specify where among the Core Worlds Yerphonia is actually located, given that Sano Sauro is from Eeropha and Granta Omega is from Nierport VII and Sano Sauro is supposed to have sponsored Granta Omega’s attendance at the All Sciences Research Academy at Yerphonia, it makes sense to me for Yerphonia to be in the Eeropha Sector, too, and so that’s where I’ve located it.


End file.
